
Glass ii_ ; 

Book ,V 3 



WHITESBORO'S GOLDEN AGE. 



4^ 



BY D. E. WAGER, 




[The following series of papers were prepared for, and most of 
them read before the Oneida Historical Society in 1881 and 1882. 
The first paper was read December 7, 1S81.] 

In 1705 the colonial authorities of Xew York, with the approval 
of the sovereign of Great Britain, granted to five persons some 
30,000 acres of land, now known as the " Oriskany patent." The 
boundaries of that patent commence at the junction of Oriskany 
creek with Mohawk river, (where the present village of Oriskany 
is), and extend up the creek four miles, for a distance of two miles 
on each side of that stream; also, for a distance of two miles on 
each side of Mohawk river and up that stream far enough to 
include the present city of Koine. That was the first patent 
granted of lands in what is now Oneida county. 

The second grant of lands in this county, by the same 
authorities, was made in 1734, and known as " Cosby's manor," 

The Village of Whitesborough was incorporated under that name by an Act of 
the Legislature passed March :?t;, 1813. The official name of its Post Office is still 
Whitestown. Whitesboro has long been the popular name of both. By an Act of the 
Legislature passed June 14, iSSi, the corporate name of the village was changed to 
Whitesboro. For the above engraving of its seal (representing the wrestling match 
between the pioneer settler and an Oneida chief,) we ai-e indebted to the courtesy of 
Mrs. B. W. Wliitcher, the authoress of "A Few Stray Leaves in the History of 
Whitesboro," published May 31, 1884. 






66 WHITESBORO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

the western boundary of which was at the point where Sauquoit 
creek empties into the Mohawk river, at or near what is now the 
village of Whitesboro. 

A glance at the map of Oneida county will show, that between 
the above two tracts of land, is a strip about two miles wide and 
six miles in length, and on both sides of Sauquoit creek and 
Mohawk river. There are about 6,000 acres of land in that strip 
of territory, and in 1736, the above authorities granted that parcel 
to Frederick Morris and twelve others, under the name of the 
" Sadachqueda patent ; " it has been sometimes called and known 
as the " Morris tract." At the breaking out of the Revolutionary 
war, Hugh Wallace was the owner of that patent. He had been 
from 1769 .to 1775 a member of the New York Legislative Council, 
and by reason of his adherence to the crown, the New York 
Legislature in October, 1779, passed an act confiscating his 
property, forfeiting it to the State, and ordering the Sadequada 
patent to be sold. In January, 1784, that tract was so sold, and 
John Taylor, Zephaniah Piatt, Hugh White and others became the 
purchasers. 

By an arrangement between the owners, they were to meet on 
the patent in the summer of 1784, survey it out, make a partition 
and divide the lands among themselves. 

In pursuance of this plan, and for the further purpose of becom- 
ing a permanent settler in the then remote wilderness, Hugh 
White, in May, 1784, left his old home in Middletown, Connecticut, 
accompanied by three sons, a daughter and a daughter-in-law, and 
proceeded by water to Albany, where they were joined by another 
son who had gone overland with two yokes of oxen. From 
Albany the party went by land to Schenectady, and there a 
batteau was purchased, and while the family and their goods 
went up the Mohawk by boat, the oxen were driven along the 
road and Indian trail, and kept even pace by land. 

Not far from May 20th, 1784, the party reached a place on the 
south side of Mohawk river, a few miles east of what is now Utica, 
known as " Shoemaker's." The charred remains of burned build- 
ings and the desolated and deserted, but once cultivated fields, 
told a sad, but eloquent tale of the ravages which the war of the 
Revolution had made. With a commendable foresight the party 
stopped there long enough to plant one of the unoccupied fields, 
to corn. They then resumed their journey and reached their place 
of destination on Sauquoit creek, and at what is now the village of 
Whitesboro, on the 5th day of Juue, 1784. A temporary bark 



HUGH WHITE, THE PIONEER. 67 

shanty was erected for that summer's use, and until .a more sub- 
stantial structure could be built. Soon after a log house was 
erected about quarter to half of a mile westerly of Sauquoit creek, 
on a rise of ground which formed the west bank of the valley of 
that stream, and about half a dozen rods southerly of what is now 
Main street in that village. It was at that house that Lafayette 
stopped and shared the hospitalities of Hugh White in the fall of 
that year, during his attendance at the treaty with the Indians 
held at Fort Stanwix. In the partition of that patent Mr. White 
acquired title to about 1,500 acres, and his possessions embraced 
the site of Whitesboro and extended southerly to the south 
bounds of the tract. 

During the season of 1784, Mr. White and his sons cleared off 
about four acres of land by chopping down the trees, but not by 
piling and burning them as now, but by rolling the logs off the 
embankment east of his house, and upon the low lands between it 
and Sauquoit creek. That clearing included the present " village 
green," the sites which were subsequently those of the court house 
and jail, and adjacent lands. In due tims the male members of 
that family hoed and harvested the field of corn, which they had 
planted at " Shoemaker's " the May before, and that crop did 
good service for the next winter's supply of food and fodder. 

In January, 1785, Hugh White returned to Connecticut for the 
rest of his family, and at once brought them to his new settlement 
on the banks of the Sauquoit. The family then consisted in all of 
fifteen persons, viz. : five sons, (two of them married,) three 
daughters, two daughters-in-law, and three grand children. Those 
were the pioneer settlers subsequent to the revolution, and then 
the only white settlement in the State west of what is now the 
village of Herkimer, formerly " Fort Dayton." 

Old Montgomery County. 

At that period of time, that settlement was in Montgomery 
county, which county then included all of the State west of the 
county of Albany. That county was divided into " districts," 
not into towns as now. The "German Flatts district" then 
included part of what is now Herkimer county, and thence to the 
northern, southern, and western boundaries of the State. 

On the 7th of March, 1788, Montgomery county was organized 
into towns, and all that part of the State west of a north and south 
line drawn aci'oss the State, passing through Genesee street in Utica, 
was formed into the "Town of Whites Town." The territory 



68 WHITESBOEO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

embraced *in this town included about half the State, with a 
population, perhaps, of less than 200. The first town meeting was 
held at the tavern of D. C. White, in Whitesboro, son of Hugh 
White, April 6, 1789. The first general election held in the town 
in 1791, commenced at Cayuga bridge, then adjourned to Manlius, 
thence to Fort Stanwix, and closed up at Whitesboro. 

Old Herkimer County. 

In February, 1791, Herkimer was carved out of Montgomery 
county, and extended west to Ontario county, which had 
been taken off in 1789. By this act of 1791 it was provided 
that the courts of common pleas and of general sessions for 
Herkimer county, "should be held at the church in the town 
of Herkimer." The church thus alluded to then occupied the 
present site of the Dutch Reformed church in that village, on the 
corner diagonally across the street from the present court house. 
But two terms in each year were provided for by said act, and 
those terms to commence on Tuesday and end the Saturday 
following. The judges and justices of these courts and the 
supervisors of the several towns in Herkimer county were 
authorized to select the site, and the latter to raise money to 
erect a court house and jail. The site selected is the present one 
in Herkimer village, and the jail was placed in the story under- 
neath the court house. Henry Staring, a plain Dutch farmer, but 
of much native ability and good strong sense, and who had 
rendered valuable service, and endured great suffering for his 
country, was appointed first judge. Jedediah Sanger, of New 
Hartford, Hugh White and Amos Wetmore, of Yfhitesboro, were 
made side judges. William Colbrath, of Fort Stanwix, was 
appointed sheriff, and Jonas Piatt, of Whitesboro, county clerk. 
Work was soon commenced on the court house and jail, and an 
act was passed in January, 1793, authorizing the supervisors to 
raise £1,000 to defray the expenses ' already incurred in the 
erection of those buildings; by the same act the courts above 
mentioned w r erc authorized to alternate " between the court house 
in the town of Herkimer, and such place in the town of Whites- 
town as said courts should order to be entered in their minutes ; " 
and the sheriff was ordered to remove all the Herkimer county 
prisoners to the jail in that county from Montgomery county, on 
or before March, 1793. In pursuance of above act the January 
term of the court was held in 1794 in an unfinished "meeting 



HERKIMER COUNTY COURTS. 69 

house," iri what is now New Hartford, at which Judge Stalling 
presided. That was the first court of record held within the 
limits of Oneida county, and was the same court where Sheriff 
Colbrath passed up to the judge a jug of gin as the court was 
about to adjourn for the day, in consequence of the absence of 
fire and the intense cold in the building. As that story has been 
so often told and so many times published, it need not be repeated 
here. In March, 1 79r> 7 a law was passed authorizing the super- 
visors of Herkimer county to raise $720 to complete the court 
house and jail, and iri March, 1797, they were further empowered 
to raise all funds necessary for that purpose. 

While Jonas Piatt was county clerk of Herkimer county, he 
kept the county cleric's office at Whitesboro, but when Oneida 
county was taken off in 1798, the Herkimer county clerk's office 
was ordered to be located at Herkimer. In 1804, that clerk's 
office was destroyed by fire, and with it, about all of the valuable 
books, records and papers. 

Not long since I examined the clerk's office at Herkimer to 
gather material for this sketch; but that fire of 1804 had made 
sad havoc with the early records. In a dry goods box, promis- 
cuously stowed away, were "declarations," "Afan*," and other 
pleadings and legal proceedings, with the names of E. Clark, T. 
R. Gold, Jonas Piatt and J. Kirkland, early members of the bar 
in this locality when it was. part of Herkimer county, endorsed on 
such papers, but so bedimmed by time and damaged by fire as to 
make it extremely difficult to gather much information therefrom. 
I was able, however, to ascertain from scraps and fragments of 
scorched and half burned court calendars, minutes of the courts 
and other legal documents, that prior to 1794, the Herkimer courts 
were held in what is now the village of Herkimer ; and that from 
and after the January term of the Common Pleas in 1794 (which 
term was held at New Hartford) until Oneida county was taken 
off in 1798, the county courts of Herkimer alternated between 
Herkimer village and "the school house near Hugh White's in 
Whitestown." That school house stood on the north-easterly side 
of what is now Main street in Whitesboro, and was the site 
subsequently occupied by the Academy, and now by the residence 
of Hon. C. M. Dennison. 

In January, 1795, at a term of the Common Pl?as held at the 
court house in Herkimer, a vote was taken by the judges and 
justices present, as to the place in Whitestown the next June term 
should be held, and the votes, as entered on the minutes of the 



70 

court, stood eleven for " the school house near Hugh White's," and 
two votes for " the meeting house near Jedediah Sanger." Those 
two votes were James Dean and James Steele. I did not find any- 
other vote entered in detail upon the minutes, as to where the 
courts should be held. The June term of 1795, and the September 
and October terms of 1796 and 1797 and the January term of 1798 
were held at said school house. The fact that the county clerk's 
office of Herkimer county, for the first seven years after that 
county was organized, was kept at Whitesboro, and was so kept 
for eighteen years alter Oneida county was formed, and that the 
county courts were held there half the time, had much to do in 
attracting thither, at that early period, leading lawyers and 
prominent citizens and in giving to that village a start and 
prominence in the early history of the county. 

Oneida County. 

In March, 1798, Oneida county was formed, and its boundaries 
then extended to the north and south bounds of the State, and 
as far west as Onondaga county. By that act courts were 
directed to be held "at the school house near Fort Stanwix," 
which school house then stood in the southeast corner of the 
west park in Rome. A court house when built, was ordered 
by said act organizing the county, to be located within one mile 
of the fort. Jedediah Sanger was appointed first judge, Hugh 
White and three others, side judges. William Colbrath, who had 
been the first sheriff of Herkimer county, was made the first 
sheriff of Oneida, and Jonas Piatt, who had been first county clerk 
of Herkimer county, was made the first county clerk of Oneida. 
Dominick Lynch, a large land-holder in Rome, donated to the 
county, May 21, 1800, for the purposes of court house and jail, the 
present site occupied by those edifices. In March, 1801, an act 
was passed providing for the keeping of Oneida county prisoners 
in the Herkimer county jail, but to be removed therefrom to 
Oneida county, as soon as the sheriff of the latter county should 
deem the jail directed to be built in Oneida county sufficiently 
finished for the safe keeping of prisoners. In April, 1801, Thomas 
Jenkins and H. L. Hosmer, of Hudson, and John Thompson, of 
Stillwater, and Derick Lane of Troy, were appointed commissioners 
to locate the court house and jail in Oneida County, and they 
selected the site which Mr. Lynch had deeded to the county. The 
Whitesboro people then made an effort to make that locality ;i 
half shire town of the county; for at that time Utica was quite an 



THE COUNTY BUILDINGS. 71 

insignificant place and the leading men of the county were located 
at Whitesboro. In September, 1801, Hugh White deeded to the 
county over an acre of ground in Whitesboro to belong to the 
county, so long as it was used for purposes of court house and jail, but 
to revert to him or his heirs, when not so used. At a term of the 
Common Pleas held at the school house in Rome, in December, 1801, 
Sheriff Brodhead reported that the jail at Whitesboro was 
sufficiently completed for the safe-keeping of prisoners, and the 
court ordered the Oneida couuty prisoners in jail at Herkimer to 
be removed to the jail at Whitesboro in January, 1802. In 
February, 1802, the supervisors of Oneida County were authorized 
to raise the further sum of $539 to complete the jail (without 
mentioning which jail), and in February, 1803, they were further 
empowered to raise $500 to complete the jail at Whitesboro, and 
in April of the same year courts were authorized to be held 
alternately at Rome and Whitesboro, and the commissioners who 
had been authorized to erect the Rome jail were empowered by 
that act to go on and " cause the doors of the jail lately built at 
Rome to be made and completed." In April, 1806, the legislature 
authorized the supervisors of Oneida County to raise $4,000 to 
erect two court houses, the one near the jail at Rome and the 
other near the jail at Whitesboro, and those two court houses, both 
made of brick, were soon after built on the sites which had been 
donated to the county. The Rome court house was burned in 
1847, but the Whitesboro building yet stands, probably the oldest 
one in the State yet standing, erected for a court house. 

In delving among the session laws of the last century, to find 
laws relative to the holding of courts, I found the following law, 
passed in February, 1788, the same session Whitestown was 
formed, which may be curious and of interest at the present day, 
as showing how carefully the bench was then guarded, right after 
the Revolution, lest some wealthy and influential outsider should 
sit thereon, and by his presence overawe judges and perhaps 
thwart or prevent justice. The act reads : " No person, little or 
great, shall sit upon the bench with the judges during their 
session, upon pain of fine and imprisonment; and said judges are 
charged that they do not suffer any person to sit with them on the 
bench in their session contrary to the intent of this act." 

This preliminary sketch relative to the patents, to the organiza- 
tion of counties and towns, to the designation of county seats, 
and the erection of court houses and jails, and the holding of 
courts, seemed to be necessary for a better understanding of 



72 WHITESBORO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

some of the causes which gave to Whitesboro its start and 
importance in the early history of the county, and contributed to 
make it the abode of so many influential persons, so many 
learned and able lawyers, and so many prominent politicians and 
citizens. I have named the pioneer settler. He was a person of 
resolute will, great force of character, full of energy and enterprise, 
and with a clear and discerning mind. The fact that Hugh White, 
at the age of fifty-one years, with a large family, should break 
away from early associations and pleasant surroundings, and 
become a pioneer in such a remote wilderness as this part of the 
State then was, indicates pretty clearly the character of the man, 
and that he was a person of far-reaching sagacity to be able to 
discern what this section was destined to become. He at once set 
to work to improve and build up the neighborhood, to cause it to 
be the place for holding courts, and in various ways to make it 
attractive, so as to induce its settlement by the best class of 
citizens from his own State, as well as from other localities. The 
lawyers who early locateel in Whitesboro, were college bred and 
learned in the law, and the other citizens were generally persons of 
mark, and of more than ordinary prominence and ability. The 
ladies, too, who composed the families of those early settlers, were 
as a rule, educated and refined, and, of course, gave grace, culture 
and dignity to the circle in which they moved. In many respects 
the villages of Whitesboro and Canandaigua seem much alike. 
Both were small places. While Whitesboro had her Whites, Gold, 
Sill, Piatt, Storrs and Breese, Canandaigua had her Grangers, 
Wadsworth, Spencer, Porter, Sibley, Phelps and Gregg, men of 
distinction and large influence in the State. 

In March, 1790, Congress passed a law for taking a census of 
the inhabitants of the United States. Under that law the first 
enumeration of the people was made after the revolution, and 
from it, it appeared that there were in what is now Rome, in that 
year, some three or four families, and in what is now Utica, about 
fifteen families and one hundred persons. Whitesboro had 
twenty families and some one hundred and thirty inhabitants. 
Of this number sixty-one were males over sixteen years of age, 
twenty-five males under sixteen, and forty-four females. That 
census showed there were six hundred and eighty-nine families 
in the town of Whitestown and a total population of one 
thousand eight hundred and ninety-one. 

These papers are entitled " Whitesboro's Golden Age," and 
to show that Whitesboro had a golden age, and is justly entitled 



HUGH WHITE AND FAMILY. 73 

to that name, and to all that may be said in praise of her prom- 
inent and worthy citizens, it will be essential to give a brief 
account of some of the persons who resided there, and who con- 
tributed to give it prominence and celebrity. 

Hugh White axd Family. 
i 

Hugh White and family occupy so large a place in the history 
of this State, that a full sketch of the various members would fill 
quite a volume. Even the merest outline will be quite too 
lengthy for a paper of this kind. Hugh White was one of the 
selectmen of Middletown from 1779 to 1783; he was commissary 
in the army during a portion of the Revolutionary war, and he was 
a man of means and of position, or he would not have been 
associated with such men as joined him in the purchase of 
Sadaqueda patent. At the time of his location in Whitesboro, 
this part of the State was a wilderness, the woods peopled 
with hostile Indians, the nearest white settlement twenty miles 
distant, and the nearest mill forty miles, (at Fort Plain). Mr. 
White, like Sir William Johnson and Rev. Samuel Kirkland and 
Judge James Dean, had the prudence and sagacity to conciliate 
and make friends with the Indians. The Oneidas adopted him 
into their tribe and he was a general favorite with all. He w T as 
one of the judges of the Herkimer Common Pleas when that 
county was organized in 1791, and held that office until Oneida 
county was formed seven years later, when he was appoiuted 
judge of that court for the latter county and held the office until 
1804 — fourteen years judge. During his life he placed his sons in 
comfortable circumstances about him by giving each a farm, 
locating them in relation to his own residence according to the 
priority of their ages — the eldest being the nearest, the youngest 
the farthest removed. 

Judge White was the first settler after the Revolution, who 
dared to overleap the German settlements lower down on the 
Mohawk, and brave the dangers and the hardships of the western 
wilds. He lived to see the territory in which he settled, 
named after him as a town, and the vast wilderness, then in- 
habited only by savages, turned into cultivated fields and prosperous 
villages and become the abode of 300,000 persons, the forests and 
the red men replaced by seminaries of learning and temples of 
worship, the place where he settled and passed the remaining 
twenty-eight years of his life, become the leading village west of 
Albany, and the center of as refined and cultured a society, and 



74 

the home of as influential and intelligent a class of men as any 
in the state or nation. He died on the 17th of April, 1812, at 
the age of 79 years. His funeral was attended by his numerous 
descendants and connections, and by an unusual concourse of the 
most aged and respectable inhabitants of the county. The 
remains of this pioneer settler repose in a commanding position 
in the Whitesboro cemetery, and so long as history shall retain a 
memorial of the first settlement Of this country, the name of Hugh 
White will be remembered with veneration and respect. 

Mr. White had ten children, eight of whom grew to man or 
womanhood. Daniel C. White, the eldest of his sens, came (with 
his wife and a son then two years old) with his father in 1784 to 
settle on the Sadaqueda patent. He kept tavern directly across 
the road from his father's residence, on the brow of the hill, or rise 
of ground, east of and near the site now occupied by the residence 
of Mr. Babbitt, formerly of William Robbing. It was there his 
daughter, Esther White, was bom in 1785; the first white child 
born in the State after the Revolution, west of the German Flats. 
She became in 1810 the wife of Henry R. Storrs. It was at that 
tavern the first town meeting was held in town, in April, 1789. 
Daniel C, died in 1800, and his widow kept the tavern after his 
death. Fortune C. White was another child of Daniel C. White. 
He was born at Whitesboro three years after the removal of his 
father there, and graduated at Hamilton College, which conferred 
on him in 182G, the honorary degree of master of arts. He read 
law with his brother-in-law, Henry R. Storrs, and the two 
subsequently became partners. In 1828, Mr. White was member 
of assembly from this county, and again in 1837. From 1840 to 
1845, he was first judge of the Oneida Common Pleas, and was 
brigadier general of the New York State Militia. Except a 
residence of a few years at Yonkers, he was a resident all of his 
life, of the place where he was born. He died at Whitesboro in 
1866, at the same age his grandfather, Judge Hugh White, was at 
his death. 

Joseph White was another son of Judge Hugh White. He and 
his wife and his daughter Susan, then three months old, accom- 
panied the pioneer settler to Whitesboro, in May, 1784. He was 
a farmer and settled on the flats, between his father's residence and 
Sauquoit creek, and died in 1827 at the age of sixty-six years. 
The daughter Susan, above mentioned, was the one taken to the 
house of the Indian Han Yerry, at Oriskany, to be kept over 
night, as l'elated in Jones' Annals of Oneida County. Another 



HUGH WHITE AND FAMILY. 75 

daughter of Joseph White was Abigail, the wife, but now the 
widow of Samuel Wilcox. She is yet living at Whitesboro, past 
ninety-two years of age, but with a good mind and memory for 
one of her years. She is the only one of those early born who has, 
up to this time, been a continuous resident of that village.* Henry 
White, a son of Joseph White, was born in Whitesboro, the same 
year Whitestown was organized; he was ambitious in his youth 
for the army or navy, and for the services he rendered his party in 
the political campaign of 1804, when he was but sixteen years old, 
in carrying political documents and dispatches, he was promised a 
cadetship ; but as that promise was not fulfilled, he became a 
farmer. When the Utica and Schenectady Packet Boat Company 
was organized in 1822, after the completion of the Erie canal, he 
was appointed superintendent, and held that position for sixteen 
years, exhibiting great executive ability. He died in Utica in 
1 860, at the age of seventy-two. Joseph White had eleven children, 
five of them sons, and two of the latter died in infancy. 

Hugh White, Jr., was another son of Judge Hugh White. For 
three years Hugh, Jr., was in the Revolutionary army, and for a 
time on board a privateer during that war. He was twenty-one 
years old when he accompanied his father to Whitesboro in 1784. 
He was a farmer, and lived near his father's residence, and 
had seven children. One of his sons was Canvass White, 
who served in the war of 1812, was one of the early engineers 
on the Erie canal, and was sent to England by the canal 
authorities to procure mathematical instruments and to make 
observations relative to canals. To him has been generally 
ascribed the credit of being the first discoverer of water lime 
cement, until that claim was so ably combatted in a jDaper prepared 
and read before this society in November last year by Hon- 
Samuel Earl. He died in Florida in 1834. Hugh White, brother 
of Canvass White, graduated at Hamilton College in 1823, at the 
age of twenty-five, read law with his relatives, Storrs & White, 
and afterwards in New York city, but soon turned his attention 
to other pursuits. From 1825 to 1830, he was a resident of 
Chittenango, and after that removed to Waterford, Saratoga 
County, and in 1844 was elected to Congress from that county, 
and was subsequently twice re-elected, serving three terms in that 
body. 

Ansel White, was another son of Judge Hugh White. He 
accompanied the latter to Whitesboro in 1784. He was a farmer 
and had ten children. He died in that village in 1858, at the age 

* Since deceased. 



76 WHITESBORo's GOLDEN AGE. 

of ninety-three, having been a resident of that locality seventy- 
four years. 

Philo White, another and the youngest son of Judge Hugh, 
was seventeen years old when he came with his father to Whites- 
boro. He was a farmer and also engaged more or less in 
merchandising; and he had nine children, four of them sons. One 
of the sons, (Hon. Philo White, LL. D.,) was born in Whitesboro, 
and acquired an academical education at the seminary. in that 
village. His early inclinations were for the press, and before of 
age, he contributed much to the columns of the Columbian 
Gazette, a paper started in Rome in 1*799, but removed to Utica in 
1803. In 1820 he went to Washington, and while there and through 
the influence or acquaintance of his relative', Henry H. Storrs, then 
in Congress from this county, Mr. White went to North Carolina 
and became editor and proprietor of the Wester)! Carolinian, and 
so continued until 1830, when he was appointed United States 
navy agent for the Pacific station. In 1834 he established the 
North Carolina Standard at Raleigh, and was elected State 
printer and his paper became the State paper. From 1837 to 1844 
he was paymaster and purser in the United States Navy. 
Subsequently he removed to Wisconsin, was editor of several 
newspapers there, and in 1847 was member of the Territorial 
Legislature, and subsequently of the State Senate. He held other 
positions of influence in that State. In 1849 he was appointed 
United States Consul at Hamburg. In 1853 he was appointed 
charge d' affaires to the Republic of Ecuador, and the next year 
was raised to the grade of minister resident in that country, and 
there remained until 1858. Many years ago he returned to the 
village where he was born, where he now resides at the age of 
eighty-two, with a vigorous mind, respected by his neighbors and 
a very large and extensive circle of acquaintance. (Died 
February 15, 18S3.) 

General George Doolittle. 

Within two years after Judge White left Middlet own in 1784,. 
there came from that same place to Whitesboro a young man, then 
less than twenty-six years old. Although a young man in years 
he had rendered good service to his country, for during the 
struggle which resulted in our independence, George Doolittle had 
served in the continental army. He was a shoemaker by trade, 
and carried his "kit of tools" with him while in the war, and 
with these he "cobbled" and mended the shoes of the soldiers, 



GENERAL GEORGE DOOLITTLE. 77 

and the money thus earned was carefully saved.. With his little 
capital he commenced at Whitesboro the shoe-making- business, 
which expanded into that of a tanner and currier. 

He was highly prosperous in business, accumulated a handsome 
property, and was greatly respected. He was for nearly thirty 
years supervisor of Whitestown, and such was the confidence of the 
taxpayers and his fellow-citizens, in his ability and integrity, that 
there was little or no opposition, to his repeated re-elections. His 
residence at the time of his death was just east of Sauquoit creek, 
in the brick house yet standing there, a few rods southerly from 
Main street. He was the first brigadier general of militia com- 
missioned in the county, and a Roman who remembers General 
Doolittle sixty years ago, says lie was a large handsome man and 
occupied a high position in the community where he lived. He 
died quite suddenly in 1825 at the age of sixty-five years leaving 
ten children and twenty-eight grandchildren. Two of his sons, 
Jessie W. and Charles R., were prosperous merchants in Utica, 
the former as early as 1805. One of his daughters became the 
wife of Benjmin S. Walcott; another married Herbert B. Mann, a 
son of Newton Mann, then of Whitesboro, but who subsequently 
moved to Jefferson county, and after whom Mannsville was named; 
another was the wife of William K. Tibbitts; another married 
Joseph Foster, and the youngest one married Charles Hammond, 
who was prominently connected with various railroad enterprises 
in the west. His wife was the survivor of all General Doolittle's 
ten children, and a few years ago she arid her husband were resi- 
dents of Chicago. 

Amos Wetmoke. 

In 1780 Amos Wetmore, with a large family, came from Middle- 
town, Conn., and settled on lands adjoining Mr. White's, but east 
of Sauquoit creek. He was the owner of two hundred and fifty 
acres of land and was a prominent and enterprising citizen. In 
1788, the first grist mill in the State west of the German Flats, 
was erected on his lands by John Beardsley, builder, at the joint 
expense of Mr. Wetmore, Hugh White and Mr. Beardsley — the 
latter being owner of half, and each of the others of one-quarter 
of the mill. The mill was but a short distance from Mr. Wet- 
more's residence, and a number of rods east of the Sauquoit. and 
the machinery of the mill was propelled by water taken in a canal 
from the creek. In the course of a few years the mill burned 
down, and Mr. Wetmore, in 1797, built anew one, he having in the 



<0 WHITESBORO S GOLDEN AGE. 

mean time become sole owner. There had been no actual purchase 
or deed of the water, or the right to use it, to Mr. Wet more, and 
soon after the new mill was rebuilt, Mr. White insisted that unless 
Mr. Wetmore would build a dam and turn half of the water on a 
meadow contiguous to Sauquoit creek (owned by Hugh White, Jr.,) 
and become a Presbyterian and join the congregation in Whit es- 
boro under the charge of Rev. Bethuel Dodd, he (the elder Hugh 
White) would cut the old dam and deprive Mr. Wetmore of the 
use of the water. Mr. Wetmore did not consent and the dam was 
cut accordingly, and Mr. Wetmore filed a bill in chancery against 
Hugh White, Sen. and Jr., claiming that a parol agreement or 
understanding between Wetmore and the elder White existed as 
to the w r ater. Jonas Piatt, a young man of less than thirty years 
of age, then located at Whitcsboro, was solicitor for Mr. Wetmore, 
assisted by Abraham Van Vechten of Albany, one of the best real 
estate lawyers in the State. Thomas R. Gold, assisted by John V. 
Henry of Albany, also a bright legal luminary, was counsel for 
Mr. White. At the hearing in chancery, before Chancellor Lan- 
sing, the latter decided in favor of Mr. White, but on appeal to 
the Court of Errors, the latter court unanimously reversed the 
chancellor's decision and gave to Mr. Wetmore the permanent use 
of a portion o'f the water. The case after being in the courts 
seven years was decided in ] 805, and the mill was for years known 
far and wide as " Wetmore's Mills." Mr. Wetmore w r as appointed 
one of the side judges of the Herkimer Common Pleas when that 
court was organized, and in 1798 when Oneida county was formed 
he was appointed one of the justices for the county. He died in 
1808 at the age of sixty-seven years, leaving eight children and 
numerous descendants. Among his sons were Amos, Jehiel, Ezra, 
Asher and Parsons Wetmore; the latter married a daughter <>f 
Judge. Hugh White. 

Leavenworth, Wilcox, Pool, Barnard and Brain aim. 

Soon after Amos Wetmore's removal to the "Whitestown 
country," there came, (and prior to 1790), a number of other iami- 
lies from the New England States, who located at or near 
Whitesboro; but the order or the precise year of their coming can 
not now be ascertained. There were the families of Lemuel Leaven- 
worth, Reuben and Ozias Wilcox, Simeon Pool, Moses Barnard 
Jeptha Brainard; all of the foregoing appear on the United 
States census of the town of Whitestown, taken in 1790; all, except 
Mr. Pool, I believe, came from Connecticut ; Pool came from Massa- 



LEAVENWORTH, WILCOX AND OTHERS. 79 

ehusetts. It would seem from recorded deeds in the county, that 
most, if not all of the above, located on farms outside of the village 
of Whitesboro, and hence, strictly speaking, out of the line of these 
sketches. A brief reference, however, to each will not be, perhaps, 
uninteresting. Mr. Leavenworth located cast of Sauquoit creek 
and at his death, in 1825, was the owner of quite a farm. He held 

•town offices, and was coroner of the county in 1798, 1799 and 1800; 
he left a number of children. Jeptha Brainard located west of the 
village, but after a few years he moved to Western in this county, 
and died in 1829, at the age of 83 years. He was the grandfather 
of the somewhat celebrated Dr. Daniel Brainard, of Rush Medical 

'college. The Wilcox family became permanent residents of the 
town. Reuben was a soldier of the Revolution, and when he came 
to Whitesboro, bought a farm a mile west of the village, for which 
he gave two shillings per acre, and had to cut a road through the 
woods to get to it. He married a daughter of Joseph White, (and 
sister of Mrs. Abigail Wilcox,) and died in 1853 at the age of ninety 
years. He was father of Morris and Reuben Wilcox, whom present 
residents of Whitesboro will remember as being old residents of 
that place. Moses Barnard purchased considerable land in that 
locality and was one of the substantial citizens of the town; he 
died in 1811, at the age of sixty-one. Simeon Pool in 1793, owned 
some two hundred acres of land adjoining the Oriskany patent, 
west of Whitesboro. In that same year he had the contract for 
carrying the United States mails between Canajoharie and Whites- 
boro, which was evidence of the establishment of a post-office at 
the latter place, at least as early as that year. In the Western 
Oentinel of 1794, then published at Whitesboro, is an advertise- 
ment of a store at •" Pool's landing," (wherever that- may be) in 
that town. It further appears from recorded deeds, that Simeon 
Pool was a resident of Whitestown in January, 1795, but that iu 
December of the same year, he is described as being of German 
Flats. All that I. can learn further of him is from Jesse R. Pool, 
who was a resident of Whitestown since his birth in 1806, on the 
farm where he resided until his death in September last ; which 
farm was about a mile south of Oriskany. He informed me that 
his father (John H. Pool) was a cousin of Simeon ; that he remem- 
bered hearing his father read or tell of letters he had received from 
Simeon Pool, then at Washington, or further south ; giving an 
account of the arrest of Aaron Burr, in which arrest Simeon had a 
part, and of Burr's trial for treason in 1807. The Pools cordially 
disliked Burr, and hence those letters were full and interesting. 



80 WHITESBORO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

The grandfather of Jesse R. Fool came to Whitestown with another 
sou between 1790 and 1800, and the two soon afterwards moved 
into what is now Jefferson county. Jesse R. stated they moved to 
Watertown. Hough's history of that county records the fact that 
Timothy Pool was one ol the assessors and one of the overseers of 
highways of the town of Champion, the first year that town was 
organized in 1800; but what relationship that Timothy was to 
Simeon Pool, I can not state. The John Pool who was republican 
United States senator from North Carolina from 1867 to 1873, and 
who made a sensation in political circles by coming out for General 
Hancock in the presidential campaign of 1880, is supposed to be 
a descendant of the Simecn Pool above mentioned. 

Dr. Elizur Moseley. 

As early as 1790, there was living in Whitesboro, one w T ho was 
the first physician, the first merchant, and the first postmaster of 
the place. How much sooner than 1790, Dr. Elizur Moseley came 
to that village I can not ascertain. The United States census of 
August of that year, shows he was there then. He came from 
Massachusetts, and his wife was a sister of Mrs. Captain Ebenezer 
Wright, who came to Wright's settlement in Rome, in 1789, 
father of the present E. W. Wright of that town. Dr. Moseley 
erected a dwelling on the corner of what is now Main and Clinton 
streets, in Whitesboro, and in due time erected a more substantial 
dwelling, quite a nice one for the times and place. He also erected 
a store near his dwelling, and later a tavern stand. My information 
is, that he had considerable of a ride as a physician when he first 
located in the place and the country w T as new and the population 
scattered, but years before 1820 he gave up about all of his 
practice, and up to about 1830 attended mainly to <the duties 
of his store. He kept a varied assortment of goods and articles 
for sale, so much so, that his store was noted the country through 
as the place where everything was kept on hand and for sale. A 
bet was once made in the village bar-room of " the drinks for the 
crowd,' 1 that no one could go to Dr. Moseley's store and inquire 
for any article that he did not have for sale. The taker of the bet 
went over to the store and wanted to purchase a "goose yoke." 
The doctor, who knew nothing of the bet nor the object of the 
inquiry, very innocently asked which kind of a goose yoke was 
wanted, " the forked stick " or " the single goose yoke." The 
inquirer was non-plused at first, yet on second thought said he 
would take loth. The doctor went or sent up into the garret and 



DR. ELIZUR MOSELEY. 81 

brought down one of each kind, to the utter discomfiture of the 
loser of the bet, but to the great amusement of the winner, and 
the evident satisfaction of the crowd, which lingered at the bar- 
room until they got their share of the stakes. It has been here- 
tofore stated that Simeon Pool carried the mails in 1793 between 
Canajoharie and Whitesboro ; that is good evidence that there 
was a post-office there as early as the latter year; but tradition 
has it that a post-office was established in Whitesboro in 1790, and 
that Elizur Moseley was the first postmaster of the place. A 
recent letter of inquiry to the post-office department brought back 
the answer that a fire had destroyed earlier records, but that it 
appeared from records then in the office that in January, 1 795, 
Elizur Moseley was postmaster of Whitesboro, and was such 
until he was succeeded in 1825 by William G. Tracy. When he 
ceased to be postmaster of that village, it was stated in the news- 
papers of the day, that he had been longer in that service than 
any other postmaster in the United States. When Oneida county 
was formed Dr. Moseley was appointed one of the justices of the 
new county, and in 1799 he was made the second sheriff. He 
practiced medicine and carried on the mercantile business, as 
before stated, until about 1S30. His wife died about ten years 
before. About 1832 he sold his residence in Whitesboro to Dr. 
F. B. Henderson, and also sold his store, and about that time 
went to reside with his daughter, Mrs. Morrison, in Penn Yan, 
where he died about 1835. He was about five feet ten inches 
high, and is represented as being polite and affable in his manners, 
courteo\is in his conduct and bearing and careful not to say any- 
thing to hurt the feelings of others ; he was much liked and 
respected by all. He reared a family of five children, all 
daughters but one. In the Whitesboro cemetery is a lot, sur- 
rounded by a substantial iron fence, and within the enclosure are 
a number of mounds, 'all thickly overgrowm with briars and 
brambles ; there are no monuments nor headstones to tell whose 
remains rest beneath the soil, nor anything to indicate whose lot 
that fence encloses, save the single word of " Moseley " upon the 
iron gate. 

William A. Moseley was the only son of Dr. Moseley; he 
graduated at Yale college in 1816, read law with Gold & Sill, and 
soon after his admission to the bar, and about 1819, he located in 
Buffalo, and there became a prominent lawyer and citizen. 
In 1835, he was elected to the Assembly from Erie county, and 
ten years later he was elected to Congress. Late in life he 



82 WHITESBORO's GOLDEN AGE. 

married the widow of Bela Coe, of Buffalo ; she was a daughter 
of the late P. C. J. DeAngelis, formerly of Trenton, in this county. 
William A. Moseley died in New York city in 18*77, leaving no 
descendants. Those who remember him well forty years ago, 
inform me that he was tall and of commanding figure, (six ieet 
'in height,) of graceful and polished manners, and of fine literary 
tastes and acquirements, and a fair lawyer. I am told that his 
pert rait adorns the walls of the court room of the General Term 
at Buffalo. The eldest daughter of Dr. Moseley, (Mary Ann,) 
became the wife of Julius Guiteau. Another daughter became 
the wife of Roderick N. Morrison, who was a lawyer in Utica, and 
at one time law partner in that city of the late Thomas H. 
Flandrau, and later of Benjamin F. Cooper; on the death of his 
first wife, Mr. Morrison married another daughter of Dr. Moseley, 
and not far from 1835 lived in Penn Yan, and later in New York 
city. In 1850 he Avas living in San Francisco, and was probate 
judge of that city, where he died in 1856. One of Mr. Morrison's 
sons was named after Dr. Moseley ; he was lieutenant in the army, 
as a volunteer, during the Mexican war. As a romance of his 
life, a relative of his informs me that it became the lieutenant's 
duty to attend to the execution of a soldier sentenced to be shot 
for desertion 1 . A brother of the soldier thus executed swore 
vengeance against Lieutenant Morrison for his part in the affair, 
and some years after, that brother and the lieutenant met in 
the streets of San Francisco, and with little or no warning, the 
brother drew his pistol and shot Lieutenant Moseley Morrison 
dead in the streets of that city. Another daughter of Dr. 
Moseley married Valentine Morris, son of Judge Morris, of 
Butternuts, Otsego county ; he was a midshipman in the United 
States Navy when young, and later in life had charge of the 
property of the United States at Sacketts Harbor, where his wife 
died not many years ago. The daughter who married Julius 
Guiteau outlived her husband and died some twenty years ago, 
and her remains are in the Whitesboro cemetery. 

As I shall have considerable to say in relation to those lawyers 
located in Whitesboro prior to 1800, and to make reference to the 
Circuit Courts, and Courts of Oyer and Terminer held in that village 
up to 1820, it may add interest to give a brief statement of the 
condition of the judiciary and the mode of obtaining admission to 
the bar, at the time the pioneer lawyers made Whitesboro their 
home. 

In 1790 there were but three Supreme Court judges in the State, 



OLD TIME LAWYERS. 83 

and they held all the general terms in the State, all of the Circuit 
Courts, and Courts of Oyer and Terminer in the respective counties. 
The salary of the chief justice was $750 per annum, that of the 
two associate judges $500 each. There was not then, nor for many 
years thereafter, a single text book on law, by an American 
author — not any work on the practice in the courts — not a volume 
of reported decisions, nor any " rules " of the courts to govern the 
judges or to guide the practitioners. There were no degrees 
among lawyers as in later years, such as attorneys, counselors and 
solicitors. Before persons could be admitted to the bar, they 
were required to serve seven years' clerkship with a practicing 
attorney, or else, three years of such clerkship and pursue classical 
studies for four years — making seven years, either way. They 
were then admitted, not as now by courts after an examination, 
but licensed by the governor of the State, on the recommendation 
of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and on signing the "roll 
for attorneys," then kept in the Supreme Court clerk's office in the 
city of New York, and on taking the following oath: 

"I, , do solemnly, without any mental reservation or equivoca- 
tion whichsoever, swear and declare that I renounce and abjure all allegiance 
and subjection to all and every foreign king, prince, potentate and state, in 
all matters ecclesiastical, as well as civil, and that I will bear faith and true 
allegiance to the State of New York, as a free and independent State. 

I do swear that I will truly and honestly demean myself in the 

practice of an attorney according to the best of my ability. 

On that " roll," and underneath above oath, are the signatures 
of some thirty or forty attorneys, with the date of subscription 
opposite, or underneath each signature. The earliest date on that 
"roll" is January 12, 1790. Over the date of April 24, of same 
year, is the autograph of DeWitt Clinton ; opposite the date of 
May 1, 1790, is the autograph of John V. Henry, who became one 
of the legal luminaries of the State; opposite the date of August 
5, 1790, is the autograph of Francis Blood good, who became after- 
wards a prominent citizen of Utica, State senator, county clerk of 
this county from 1802 to 1813, and again from 1815 to 1821 ; oppo- 
site the date of October 20, 1790, is the name of Henry W. 
Livingston, who also was a resident of Utica from 1808 to 1814. 

Jonas Platt. 

On the roll and opposite the date of July 27, 1 790, is the autograph 
of one who, at that date, was but a month and a few days past his 
twenty-first birthday, and who in a few months thereafter, took up 



84 WHITESBORO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

his residence in Whitesboro, and thereby became the pioneer law- 
yer in the State west of Johnstown, and who also in due time 
made his impress upon the little hamlet where he settled and sub- 
sequently rose to eminence in the county and State. That pioneer 
young lawyer was Jonas Piatt. He was born at Poughkeepsie, 
and read law with Richard Varick, attorney general of the State. 
His father "was Zephaniah Piatt, a prominent, wealthy and influen- 
tial citizen of that locality, who became, in 178.4, one of the owners 
of a tract of land in Clinton county, in this State, bounded east by 
Lake Champlain and extending westerly on both sides of the 
Saranac river, so as to malce seven miles square; Plattsburgh was 
named alter him. Besides the partnership which Zephaniah Piatt 
had in the Clinton county lands, and in the Sadaqueda patent, as 
heretofore mentioned, he was also interested in lands in the ''Mili- 
tary tract," in the western part of the State. For three years he 
was delegate to the Continental Congress, a member of the com- 
mittee of safety, twice a deputy to the Provincial Congress of 
New York, State senator from 1778 to 1784, member of the council 
of appointment in 1778 and again in 1781, and first judge of 
Dutchess county from 1781 to 1795. Jonas Piatt had not only the 
wealth and influence of his father to back him, but the same year 
that he located in Whitesboro, he married into the wealthy and 
aristocratic Livingston family of Poughkeepsie; his wife was a 
sister of the Henry W. Livingston, above mentioned, and aunt of 
the second wife of Judge Smith Thompson, of the Supreme Court of 
this State, and later of the United States Supreme Court. It was 
between August 1, 1790, and November 12, of that year, that 
Jonas Piatt became a resident of Whitesboro, as evinced by the 
facts, that the United States census taken August, 1790, does not 
contain his name, while a deed to him of lands in Whitestown, 
. recorded in the county clerk's office, bearing date November 12, 
!79(), describes him "of Montgomery county,' as Whitesboro was 
at that date. It is quite likely, that the large interest which the 
father of Jonas Piatt then had in the Sadaqueda patent, and the 
fact that the tide of emigration was then setting in. strongly to 
the " Whitestown country," and that in ail human probability a 
new county would be soon organized in this part of the State, with 
new county offices to be filled, had much to do with the son's mak- 
ing Whitesboro his future home. Mr. Jonas Piatt became the 
owner of quite a parcel of laud in that patent, by a deed from his 
father, and he and his wife went to housekeeping in a log cabin on 
the corner of what is now Main and Mohawk streets in that village. 



JONAS PLATT. 85 

In less than six months thereafter Herkimer county was organized, 
and the next day after such organization Jonas Piatt was appointed 
its first county clerk, and held that office for seven years, and kept 
it and its records at Whitesboro. In 1795 he was elected to the 
assembly from the district then composed of the counties of Her- 
kimer and Onondaga. On the 15th of March, 1798, Oneida county 
was taken off from Herkimer, and four days thereafter Mr. Piatt 
was appointed clerk of this new county, holding and keeping the 
office and the records at Whitesboro until 1802 — making a clerk- 
ship of eleven years for the two counties. The same year that he 
was appointed county clerk of Oneida, and within a few weeks 
thereafter, he was nominated by the federalists for Congress, for 
the district then composed of the counties of Montgomery, Herki- 
mer, Oneida and Chenango, and in April was elected. Up to this 
time he was the first lawyer, the first county clerk and the first con- 
gressman who resided within what is now Oneida county. Hence 
it is apparent that within the first decade after Jonas Piatt's 
removal to Whitesboro, he rose rapidly to prominence, and became 
an important factor in the affairs of the county and in the politics 
of the State. In the mean while his law business increased, and 
he must have attained considerable distinction at the bar, for I 
find that in 1#07 . he and William W. Van Ness of Albany, both 
federalists, were brought forward as candidates for the vacant 
judgeship of the Supreme Court, occasioned by the resignation of 
Brockholst Livingston to accept the appointment of judge of the 
United States Supreme Court. The federal members of the 
appointing power were at first equally divided between Piatt and 
Van Ness, but after consultation and comparison of views, Mr. 
Van Ness was appointed, and Mr. Piatt had to bide his time. It 
was not long, however, he had to wait. An election of State sen- 
ators was to take place in April, 1809, and the federal party made 
great efforts that year to carry the legislature, by nominating their 
best and most popular men. It was the next year after President 
Madison's election, an "off year" to the national administration, 
and at a time when the people, especially in the country districts, 
were much excited and dissatisfied with the "embargo act" and 
other measures of that administration. Mr. Piatt and two other 
federalists were nominated by their party for State senators in the 
"western district," then composed of all of the State west of Mont- 
gomery county. Elections were then held in April, and a property 
qualification required. That " western district " had not elected a 
Federal Senator since 1799, and there was but little faith that Mr. 



86 WIIITESBORO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

Piatt and his associates could be elected. Election came, and all 
three federalists were elected by three hundred and ninety-one 
majority. This was indeed a great surprise all through the State, 
and seemed at once to bring Jonas Piatt prominently to the front 
as the federal candidate for Governor in 1810. The town of 
Whitestown, always strongly federal as long as that party existed, 
wave Jonas Piatt for senator and one of his associates three hundred 
and fifty-four votes and his other associate three hundred and 
fifty-three votes, while it gave the opposition ticket one hundred 
and fifty votes ; the towns which now constitute Oneida county 
gave that federal ticket over eight hundred majority. The first 
session of the Senate after Mr. Piatt's election did not begin until 
January 30, 1810, yet twenty-five days before that time a 
federalist meeting was held at Albany, presided over by Abraham 
Van Vechten, at which Jonas Piatt was nominated for governor. 
It was pretty well understood at that time that Governor Daniel D. 
Tompkins would be renominated as Mr. Piatt's competitor, and 
he was so renominated in just one month from that time, and in 
April thereatter, was a second time elected, his majority over Mr. 
Piatt in the Slate being about six thousand five hundred. At 
that election the " western district " returned to its old love and 
o-ave Mr. Tompkins a goodly majority. The town of Whitestown, 
which gave in 180V Mr. Tompkins one hundred and forty-four 
votes and Morgan Lewis, his opponent, three hundred and twenty- 
two at this election in 1810 gave Mr. Tompkins one hundred and 
sixty-one votes and Mr. Piatt three hundred and seventy-two; 
and right here is a good place to mention the votes given for 
Governor in Whitestown from 1807 to 1818, as showing how 
slio-ht the increase, and how little they varied, during that 
decade. In 1S13 Governor Tompkins ran the third time and 
received in that town one hundred and sixty-one votes, (the exact 
number he received when he ran against Jonas Piatt,) while 
Rufus King, his opponent, received three hundred and sixty-four 
votes, or eight less than Mr. Piatt received. In 1816, when 
Tompkins ran the fourth time, he received one hundred and forty 
votes, or four votes less than he received 1807, when he ran the 
first time, while Stephen Van Pensselaer, his opponent, received 
three hundred and fifty-five. 

Mr. Piatt was a prominent member of the Senate and took an 
active part in the project for the construction of the Erie canal. 
His term expired in April, 1813, and the next February there waa 
a vacancy on the bench of the Supreme Court by reason of the 



JONAS PL ATT. 87 

promotion of Judge Smith Thompson to the Chief Judgeship. A 
majority of the federalists favored Jonas Piatt for that vacancy. 
His competitor was Richard Riker, of New York city, therefore, 
a strong "Clintonian." The federalists were in the minority in 
the appointing Board, but a " Clintonian" member of that Board 
cast his vote for Jonas Piatt and the latter was thereby appointed 
judge, February 23, 1814. It was charged at that time that 
DeWitt Clinton's secret influence was exerted in favor of Mr. 
Piatt and against Mr. Riker; at any rate, Mr. Riker seemed so to 
think, for after that appointment he ceased to be a friend of 
DeWitt Clinton. Although Mr. Piatt was appointed judge in 
February, 1814, it was nearly four years thereafter before he held 
a Circuit Court in this county. The first term he held in the 
county was at Whitesboro, commencing December 17, 1817, and 
lasting ten days ; there were over two hundred and fifty causes on 
the calendar, and one hundred and one jury trials. He held court 
almost every night until midnight and commenced early each 
morning. He "pushed things" somewhat after the manner of 
the late Judge Gridley. The next term he held in the county was 
at Rome, in June, 1818, lasting four days, and thirty- four jury 
trials disposed of. In November of same year, he held a Circuit at 
Utica, and disposed of seventy-two jury trials. The nature of those 
jury trials the records of the court do not show. In June, 1821, 
he held another term at Rome, and the next November at Utica, 
and those five terms were all he held in this county while on the 
bench. He held courts, however, in other counties of the State, 
and did his share of the general term business. The newspapers 
of that period speak of him as an indefatigable worker. When he 
went upon the bench in 1814, there were about a dozen volumes, 
all told, of reported decisions, an 3 when he left it about ten more 
volumes were added to the list. In 1821, and while yet judge, he 
was elected from this county to the constitutional convention. 
He was a strong federalist, and was not imbued with the pro- 
gressive views then taking hold of the people. While a member 
of that convention he not only spoke and voted against some of the 
liberal features of the constitution, but did not sign the 
instrument after its adoption by the convention. That constitu- 
tion went into effect January 1, 1823, and put an end to the term 
of the old judges. Governor Joseph C. Yates sent the names of 
the judges of the old Supreme Court to the Senate for confirmation 
as the judges of the new Supreme Court, but that body rejected 
them, and thereupon Judge Piatt was retired to private life. 



88 WHITESBORO's GOLDEN AGE. 

When Judge Piatt left the bench he had lost most of his 
property by reason of his large expenses and the smallness of his 
salary. He at once resumed the practice of law with all the in- 
dustry, ardor and energy of his younger years. He removed to 
Utica about 1824, and in company with his son opened a law 
office in that then village. Not far from 1828, he removed to 
New York city to practice law, and did there a fair share of 
business. He was one of the three arbitrators (the other two 
being merchants, I believe) in the Greek frigates litigation, out of 
which arose great excitement at the time, and discussion in the 
newspapers, by reason of the decision in the case and the fees 
charged. Time and "the sober second thought of the people" 
entirely vindicated the character, integrity and fair fame of Judge 
Piatt. Failing health compelled him to relinquish his law 
business, and soon after 1830 he removed to a farm in the town 
of Peru, near Lake Champlain, in Clinton county, and there he 
engaged in agricultural pursuits. He died very suddenly 
February 22, 1834, at the age of 65, of disease of the heart. The 
Clinton county bar held a meeting on the occasion of his decease 
and passed suitable resolutions. A meeting of the Oneida county 
bar was held March 10, 1834, at Whitesboro, the Common Pleas 
being then in session. General Joseph Kirkland was chairman 
and Chester Hayden secretary. A committee on resolutions, com- 
posed of Nathan Williams, J. A. Spencer, Theodore Sill, J. H. 
Ostrom, F. C. White and Hiram Denio, reported a series of 
resolutions, expressive of their high opinion and regard for 
deceased and regret at his death, and resolving to wear the usual 
badge of mourning for thirty days. Nathan Williams, in a 
speech, paid high tribute to the worth of the departed, and gave a 
brief sketch of some of the incidents in his life. In the meridian 
of life, Judge Piatt embraced the doctrines of the gospel, and was 
a meek and devoted Christian, making open profession of the faith 
that was in him. He died as he had lived, in peace and charity with 
a?h leaving not an emeny behind him, but rather a multitude of 
ardent friends who lamented his death and mourned that he was 
gone. Those now living, who remember Judge Piatt as he was 
on the bench and after he left it, describe him as about five feet 
eight inches high, medium size, dark eyes, of quiet demeanor, 
courteous in his manners, dignified, yet affable in his bearing, 
social in his intercourse with others, a close student and a diligent 
worker. The reports oi the Supreme Court, after he left the 
bench, showed that he had a fair share of business as counsel from 



JONAS PLATT. 89 

all parts of the State. His life had been one of incessant activity, 
and during the forty years that he had been among the most 
prominent of the actors on life's busy stage, he had witnessed im- 
portant changes in the country at large, but more especially in 
the locality where he commenced his professional career. The log 
cabin where he and his wife commenced housekeeping, gave place 
in a few years to the fine mansion yet occupying the site, and the 
young saplings which his thrifty and industrious hands planted 
near a century ago, are now the stately and magnificent trees 
which shade and beautify the grounds and ornament the village. 
He was the first president of the Oneida Bible society, in 1810, and 
was such for four years, and again from 1824 to 1828. 

Judge Piatt had eight children — two sons and six daughters, 
all born in Whitesboro. The eldest son was Zephaniah ; he 
graduated in 1815 from Hamilton college, read law, was admitted 
to practice, and became his father's law partner in Utica, after the 
latter left the bench. When Judge Piatt removed to New York, 
the son located in Michigan, and was Attorney-General of that 
State. In 1868 he removed to South Carolina; was appointed 
a judge of one of the courts in that State, and died at Aiken in 
1871, at the age of seventy-five years. Henry Piatt, the other son, 
attended the school of Mr. Rawson, in Whitesboro, where he was 
a classmate of John Stryker, of Rome and Charles Tracy of New 
York ; he engaged in mercantile pursuit!, removed to New York 
city, and died many years ago. In the Whitesboro cemetery are 
three little mounds, side by side, but with no enclosure surround* 
ing them. The time-worn and faded headstones tell us they are 
the graves of three of the daughters of Jonas and Helen Piatt — 
the one their first, and another their last born, all three dying 
before 1811. The other three daughters of Judge Piatt reached 
maturity. One became the wife of Truman Parmele, for many 
years a resident of Utica and among its respected and worthy 
citizens. Her name was Helen, alter her mother. Susan was 
another; she became the first wife of Richard R. Lansing, after 
whom the capital of Michigan is named. He was a prominent 
citizen of Utica, and a nephew of Chancellor Lansing. After the 
death of his first wife, which occurred not far from 1835, R. R. 
Lansing married her cousin, the widow of Judge Smith Thompson. 
Cornelia, another daughter, was engaged to be married to Rev. 
Theodore Spencer, son of Chief-Justice Ambrose Spencer. She 
was east on a visit, but reaching Albany on her way home, 
sickened and died but a short time before the day fixed for the 



90 WHJTESBORO's GOLDEN AGE. 

■wedding. She died May 27, 1821, at the age of twenty-two years. 
Those now living who remember her inform me she was a 
beautiful, highly educated and accomplished young lady. Theo- 
dore Spencer died nearly fifty years after his first love, yet the 
remains of both repose near each other, in the rural cemetery of 
the village where she was born. 

Elias K. Kane. 

John, Charles, Elisha and Elias Kane were brothers. They were 
as enterprising business men, and their family connections as 
influential and as highly respected as any in the State. They were 
cousins to Chancellor Kent, and one of their sisters married into 
the wealthy and aristocratic Van Rensselaer family, while another 
sister was the wife of Joseph, C. Yates, who was judge of the 
Supreme Court of this State from 1808 to 1823, and the first 
governor of the State under the constitution of 1821. One of the 
above Kanes was grandfather of Dr. Kane, the celebrated Arctic 
explorer. In August 1791, Moses Barnard of Whitesboro 
conveyed to the above named Kane brothers five acres of 
land in Whitesboro, east of but next to Sauquoit creek, and 
there Elias Kane carried on business as merchant at the period 
above named. He was father of Elias Kent Kane, who was born 
in Whitesboro about 1796. The son was a graduate of college and 
then read law. When he was 20 years of age he settled in Illinois, 
and, in 1818, was a member of the convention which formed the 
first constitution for that State; when the State government was 
organized, he was appointed the first Secretary of State, although 
but twenty-three years of age. He was subsequently elected to 
the State legislature and, in 1825, elected to the United States 
Senate, and, at the end of his term, re-elected. When Congress 
assembled in December, 1835, Mr. Kane had hardly recovered from 
a severe attack of fever contracted at his home in Illinois ; the 
ride over rough and muddy roads to Washington, in an inclement 
season of the year, brought on another fit of sickness, and he died 
at his father's residence in Washington, December 12, 1KS5, at the 
early age of forty, and within five days after Congress had 
assembled. His loss was greatly deplored. 

Thomas R. Gold. 

Less than two years after Jonas Piatt became the pioneer lawyer 
of Whitesboro, there came to the same place another lawyer. He 



THOMAS R. GOLD. 91 

-was an older and an abler lawyer than Mr. Piatt, and was the 
second one who settled in that little hamlet. At the time of his 
coming he was twenty-eight years old and had a wife, and a 
daughter. When twenty-two years old he had graduated at Yale 
College, soon after read law and was admitted to practice in the 
State of Connecticut. One of the grantees named in the Charter Oak 
charter of Connecticut was Nathan Gold, who had not long before 
emigrated to Connecticut from Edmundsburg, England. A de- 
scendant of that Nathan Gold was Rev. Hezekiah Gold, for thirty 
years Presbyterian clergyman at Cornwall, Connecticut. A son 
of that clergyman was Thomas Ruggles Gold, the second lawyer 
who located at Whitesboro. His residence and law office were 
on the northerly side of Main street west of the Presbyterian 
church. It is the place where Mrs. Alden iioav or lately resided. 
Mr. Gold seems to have taken at once front rank in his profession, 
and to have had all the business he could attend to. The earliest 
Court records in the county clerk's office at Herkimer, show his 
name oftener than any other attorney, and the' reports of the Court 
prior to the time when Storrs, Talcott and Maynard came to the bar, 
show, I think, that he had more business before the higher Courts 
than any other lawyer in central New York. The fact that in 
1796, Mr. Gold was elected State senator, and three- years later 
appointed assistant attorney general for the district then composed 
of the counties of Herkimer and Otsego, show the estimation in 
which he was held. He was a good scholar, a close law student 
and a hard worker. His mind was clear and analytical, and his mode 
of presenting facts to the jury, or questions of law to the Court in 
banc, was earnest, forcible and somewhat vehement. He was well 
read in the fundamental principles both of legal and equitable 
jurisprudence, and hence was able to cope with the best lawyers 
in the land, not only in the discussion of legal questions and those 
relating to chancery practice and equity principles, but in the 
trial of jury causes. Mr. Cold was about six feet high, well 
proportioned and of large frame, and weighed about 200 pounds, 
He was wonderfully near sighted, and the unusually large gold 
spectacles, which he procured from London, are yet preserved as a 
relic by his grand daughter, Miss Frost. In the first murder trial 
in the county after it was organized, Mr. Gold was the prosecuting 
attorney. A woman of the town of Augusta had on election day, 
April 29, 1798, shot her husband and he died the next day. She 
was indicted in May and tried June 5, 1798, before Judge James 
Kent at a court held at Rome, and convicted and sentenced to be 



92 whitesborq's golden age. 

hung the 29th of the same month, and her body to be given to Dr. 
Hull, of Augusta, for dissection.- She hung herself the night before 
the day fixed for her execution, in her cell in the Herkimer county 
jail, where the Oneida county prisoners were then kept. The 
above case, and the others which are cited, will show how swiftly 
punishment followed after crime in those days. In 1801, at a court 
held at Rome in June by Judge Kent. Mr. Gold was the prosecut- 
ing officer in another murder trial. This was the case of a man 
killing his wife with a poker in Rome. The murder was com- 
mitted February 24, 1801, the man was tried June 16, 1801, 
convicted and sentenced to be hung August 28, 1801. He was so 
executed on a gallows erected on the hill just back of Whitesboro. 
In 1807, Mr. Gold defended a man for poisoning his wife in 
Madison county. It was the next year after that county was 
organized, and the first murder trial in the county. The late 
Judge Nathan Williams was the prosecuting officer. The man 
was a singing master and had poisoned his wife, that he might 
marry one of his pupils with whom he had fallen in love. The 
offense was committed April 6, 1807, and at the first term of the 
court thereafter, commencing July 3, 1807, the prisoner was 
indicted, and the trial was set down for 6 a. m. the next day, 
July 4th. Judge William W. Van Ness presided, and it was his 
first court after his appointment a month before, when he had 
Jonas Piatt for a competitor. The trial took place in a barn in the 
town of Sullivan, as Madison county then had no court house. 
Dr. Francis Guiteau, then of Utica, was one of the witnesses for 
the people. The prisoner was convicted and hung in August 
thereafter. In December, 1817, at a court held at W 7 hitesboro, 
presided over by Judge Piatt, the first he held in this county, 
there were five murder trials, in which Gold and F. C. White 
defended the prisoners. Those were remarkable and noted cases,. 
A number of prisoners (the defendants among the number) were 
confined in the Rome jail, then constructed of hewn timbers, 
dovetailed and fastened together with thiqk planks. The prisoners 
set the jail on fire in August, 1817, in hopes of escaping in the 
confusion that would follow. They waited too long, however, 
before giving the alarm, and the result was, one of the prisoners 
was suffocated to death. There was a crack in the door, where a 
breath of fresh air could be obtained, and to that all the prisoners 
crowded, pushing and fighting for the place, and trampling each 
other under foot in the struggle for life. Help came at last, but 
not until most of the prisoners were nearly dead. They were 



THOMAS R. GOLD. 93 

taken out of the cells like so many corpses, and placed upon the 
grass in the open air to recover, if possible. Old residents oi 
Rome speak of the scene as the most ghastly they ever witnessed. 
Five of the prisoners were convicted of murder, and sentenced 
to be hung in February thereafter. The coffins were made 
and the gallows erected in Rome. The prospect of witnessing 
the novel spectacle of five persons being hung at one time was 
the means of bringing to Rome a large concourse of persons to 
witness the executions. But a few hours before the time for the 
executions, a commutation to imprisonment for life, came from 
Governor DeWitt Clinton. There was another trial which took 
place before Judge Piatt, the next year, and in winch Mr. Gold 
was engaged. Although not a criminal one it was a case of much 
importance and excited much interest. It was an action brought 
by Alvin Bronson against Melancthon T. Woolsey, to recover the 
value of a schooner lost in the war with Great Britain, at the time 
the British captured Oswego, May 6, 1814. The vessel was owned 
by the plaintiff, but was employed by the defendant, then an officer 
in the United States navy, for the transportation of ordinance and 
military stores from Oswego to Sackett's Harbor. The defendant 
had ordered those in charge of the schooner in case the British 
succeeded in carrying Oswego, to sink the vessel and her cargo. 
The vessel was sunk in about eight feet of water, the deck remain- 
ing above water. The vessel was not sunk so deep but that the 
British troops captured and raised it, and carried the vessel away 
and made Mr. Bronson a prisoner. Judge Piatt charged the jury 
that the plaintiff was entitled to recover, although the defendant 
was acting for the government, and the jury found a verdict of 
$3,830; but the general term set this verdict aside. Popple & 
Beach of Oswego, were attorneys, and Mr. Gold counsel, for plaintiff, 
and F. C. White and Nathan Williams for defendant. Mr. Bron- 
son was afterwards State Senator and one of the " immortal 
seventeen;" he died at Oswego about a year ago at the age of 
ninety-nine years. Mr. Woolsey was afterwards commodore in 
the United States navy. 

In ] 800, Mr. Gold formed a law partnership with Theodore Sill, 
whose accomplished sister he married, and the law firm of Gold & 
Sill for the quarter of a century of its existence was as widely 
and favorably known as any in the State. Persons desiring to 
pursue legal studies, sought that office from every part of the State. 
A descendant of Mr. Gokl writes me, that at one time there were 
thirty law students in that office. Among those who read law there 



94 WHITESBORO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

were Henry R. Storrs, S. A. Talcott, H. K. Jerome, Francis 
Granger, Vincent Mathews, Halsey Townsend, William A. Moseley, 
Richard R. Lansing, Icbabod C. Baker and John Stryker. As 
deeply as Mr. Gold was engaged in law business, he devoted time 
to politico and to holding offices. Besides being State Senator 
and assistant attorney general he was in 1800 member of the 
council of appointment. In 1804 he ran for Congress in the district 
then composed of Oneida, Lewis, Jefferson and St. Lawrence 
counties, but was beaten by Nathan Williams. In 1807 he was 
elected to the assembly. 

In 1808 Mr. Gold was elected to Congress over Joshua Hatha- 
way of Rome. In 1810, he ran again for Congress and was elected 
over Thomas Skinner of Utica, a brother-in-law of Judge Nathan 
Williams. In April, 1812, the last two named again ran for Con- 
gress, and Mr. Gold was elected, but the next June, Congress 
changed the congressional districts, making Oneida county and 
what is now Otsego, a district, and ordering another election 
to take place in December, 1812. At that election Morris 
S. Miller of Utica and George Brayton of Western, were com- 
petitors, and it resulted in the election of Mr. Miller. In 1814, Mr. 
Gobi was again elected to Congress by about 700 majority, over 
Nathan Williams, and that seemed to end Mr. Gold's political career, 
so far as holding office was concerned. I have heretofore mentioned 
Mr. Gold's near-sightedness. I am informed that late one night, 
he was returning home on horseback from the country, and during 
his absence the heavy rains and swollen waters of Sauquoit creek 
had carried off the planks of the bridge which he had to cross. He 
did not see what had occurred, but his sure-footed and faithful 
pony did, and carried the rider safely over by walking on one of 
the stringers. It was not until the next day that Mr. Gold learned 
of his narrow escape. Another informant says it was Dr. Moseley 
who had that adventure; he had it from the doctor's own lips. I 
give both the benefit of a hearing. 

Mr. Gold died of paralysis quite suddenly October 25, 1827, at 
the age of sixty-three years. A meeting of the Utica bar was 
held presided over by General Joseph Kirkland, at which appro- 
priate resolutions were adopted. The widow of Mr. Gold died at 
Whitesboro, July 18, 1852, at the age of eighty-seven years. 
There were five children, two sons and three daughters. Theodore 
S. Gold was a pupil in Mr. Haisey's school at Whitesboro, gradu- 
ated from Hamilton College in 1816, followed mercantile pursuits 
and was for a while a partner in Utica of Jesse W. Doolittle, a son 



WILLIAM G. TRACY. 95 

•of another of Whitesboro's early settlers. For several years he 
was editor of the Oneida Whig, and in 1837 was mayor of Utica. 
In 1849, he like his father had a stroke of paralysis, from which he 
never fully recovered. He died in Utica in 1867, at the age of 
sixty-seven. His wife was a daughter of James S. Kip, three 
times sheriff of this county — in 1804, again in 1808, and again in 
1811. A daughter of Theodore S. Gold became the wife of 
Andrew Dexter, a son of S. Newton Dexter. The other son of 
Thomas R. Gold was named after him. He too was a merchant, 
and did business as such in Whitesboro in company with B. W. 
Raymond, whose sister T. R. Gold, Jr., married. He died in Octo- 
ber, 1846, at the age of thirty-seven. The eldest of Thomas R. 
Gold's children was Harriet L. ; she was two years old when her 
parents moved to Whitesboro; she became the wife of Rev. John 
Frost; she died in Whitesboro in August, 1873, at the age of 
eighty-three years, having been a resident of that village for eighty- 
one years. The other daughters became Mrs. Walton of Schenect- 
ady and Mrs. Peck of Brooklyn. 

William G. Tracy. 

In December, 1793, there came to Whitesboro. from Norwich, 
Connecticut, to engage in mercantile pursuits, a person who by his 
integrity and fair dealing in all transactions with his fellow-men, 
won a reputation as a citizen and merchant second to no other in 
central New York, and I may add in the State. William G. Tracy 
is the person alluded to. He was then but twenty-five years of age, 
and I believe he was the next merchant in the place after Mr. Kane. 
His wife was a sister of the late Henry and George Huntington of 
Rome, and the youngest daughter of Hon. Benjamin Huntington 
of Connecticut, judge of the Supreme Court of that State, one of 
the committee of safety during the war of the Revolution, mem- 
ber of the Continental and of the first Congress under the United 
States Constitution. Mr. Tracy's residence in Whitesboro was a 
little westerly of that of Judge Piatt, and his store was nearly 
opposite on the other side of the street ; and there for over thirty- 
five years he carried on his business ; and no store in central New 
York had a larger or better class of customers or was more exact, 
fair and correct in all its dealings. Mr. Tracy was also connected 
with the industrial interests of the county and a public spirited 
citizen. His politics were of the federal school, and although firm 
and decided, he was not offensive in the expression of his views. 

He had the entire confidence cf both political parties, as evidenced 



96 WHITESBORO S GOLDEN AGE. 

by the fact that he was for twenty years treasurer of this county, 
placed there many times by the political party to which he was 
opposed. He was first appointed to that office in 1810, again in 
1811, the third time in 1813, and each year thereafter until his 
death. In August 1825, he was appointed postmaster of the 
village to succeed Dr. Elizur Moseley, the second postmaster of 
of the place, and he held that office until he died. From 1811 to 
1830, he was treasurer of the Oneida Bible Society, and held other 
positions of trust, benevolence and usefulness. After a brief 
illness he died April 15, 1830, at the age of sixty-two years. At the 
time of his death he was the oldest merchant in continuous service 
west of Schenectady. His funeral was largely attended from all 
parts of the county, and by many of those other early settlers who 
honored and respected him while living and mourned his death. 
The widow of Mr. Tracy died in April, 1852, at the age of seventy- 
three years, and a fitting monument in the Whitesboro cemetery 
marks their resting place. Mr. Tracy left four sons and five 
daughters, all dead but one son and the youngest daughter. 
William and Charles Tracy, two of the sons, are too well known 
in this community and to the bar of the State, to need any 
reference to their honored careers. William Tracy was two years 
in Hamilton College, then a year at Union, where he graduated in 
1824; for two years he read law with Storrs & White, later with 
Judge Denio, and a short time with J. H Ostrom, and in 1828 was 
admitted to the bar. He practiced law in Utica with his brother 
Charles, and about 1855 he removed to New York city, where he 
continued in a large and lucrative practice until his death in the 
fall of 1881, at the age of seventy-six. Charles Tracy graduated 
at Yale College about 1830, read law one year in New York city 
with Henry R. Storrs, completed his legal studies with Judge 
Foster of Home, was admitted to the bar about 1835, and became 
a member of the law fiim of Foster, Noyes & Tracy at Rome. He 
moved to New York about lSJS, and is now one of the leading 
lawyers in that city. Henry and Edward Tracy were the two 
other sons, and both prominent civil engineers. Henry was for a 
year and a half civil engineer for the government of New Granada. 
He died in Santa Fe De Bogota iti 1851, at the age of thirty-six. 
Edward was engineer on the Chenango Canal, later assistant 
under Hon, John B. Jervis of Rome, on the Croton Aqueduct, and 
after the resignation of the latter, chief engineer on that work 
until the work was completed and the water distributed in the 
city. He was subsequently engineer on the Des Moines navigation 



ARTHUR BREESE. 9f 

improvement, and after that was again called to the position of 
chief engineer of the Croton Water Works, and there remained 
until his death in 1875, at the age of fifty-eight. Susan, the eldest 
of the family, became the second wife of Moses Bagg, one of Utica's 
honored citizens and early residents. She died in 1859. Margaret, 
another daughter, and the second of the children, married Rev. 
Chauncey E. Goodrich, a faithful divine, and for many years a 
worthy resident of Utica. She died in 1862. Annie, the fourth 
of the family, was the first wife of William Curtis Noyes, one of 
the ablest lawyers in this county, and later of the city of New 
York. She died in 1836, at the early age of twenty-nine years. 
Until within a few years past the plain and unpretending house 
in Rome yet remained, where Mr. and Mrs. Noyes first went to 
housekeeping. Catharine became the wife of Milton D. Parker, a 
worthy citizen of Utica. She was drowned with a number of others 
in April, 1845, at the time the steamboat Swallow ran aground 
opposite Hudson. Frances, the youngest of the daughters, and 
the only one of them alive, is the wife of William Henry Welles, a 
resident of New York city. All of Mr. Tracy's family were 
cultured, and valuable acquisitions to the society of Whitesboro. 

Arthur Breese. 

The year before E. K. Kane was born, in 1794, there settled in 
Whitesboro another lawyer, who subsequently became prominent 
in the politics of the county. That lawyer was a native of New 
Jersey, graduated at Princeton College, read law in Philadelphia 
with the celebrated Elias Boudinot, was admitted to the bar in 
1792, and when he located in Whitesboro was but twenty-five years 
old. His wife was a sister of Mrs. Jonas Piatt, and as Mr. Piatt 
was county clerk of Herkimer county in 1794, he made Arthur 
Breese, the lawyer alluded to, deputy county clerk. In 1796 Mr. 
Breese was elected to the Assembly, as successor to Jonas Piatt in 
that body, and when Oneida county was formed, in 1798, Mr. 
'Breese was appointed the first surrogate, and held that office for 
ten years thereafter; surely those brothers-in-law had their share 
of offices. A law partnership between Messrs. Piatt and Breese 
was formed, and their marriage, business, social and political ties 
were strong indeed. The first homestead of Mr. Breese in Whites- 
boro was opposite the "Green," was known later as the "Storrs 
House," where the late Thomas H. Flandrau lived many years, and 
which dwelling tradition says Mr. Breese erected. Later, Mr. 
Breese built a fine residence on the hill near the cemetery, where 



98 WHITESBORO's GOLDEN AGE. 

Gideon Granger resided a number of years subsequent to 1814. 
As Mr. Breese was a federalist, the council of appointment in 1808 
turned him out of the office of surrogate, and about that time he 
moved to Utica. On Mr. Breese's removal to Utica, he was made 
one of the clerks of the old Supreme Court, and he was also master in 
chancery. He was clerk of that court from 1808 until his death. 
He died in 1825, in the city of New York, where he had gone for 
his health. His age was fifty-five years. Mr. Breese was not a 
prominent member of the bar, nor do the court proceedings show 
that he ever had much to do as an attorney or counsel; but he was 
among the most worthy of the citizens of the county, and very 
highly respected and esteemed. While he and his family were 
residents of Whitesboro, they were valuable additions to the 
society of the place. He had quite a large family of children, all 
of whom were cultivated and refined. Samuel L., one of his sons,, 
was rear admiral of the navy, and sixty years in the service. One 
of his daughters became the wife of B. B. Lansing, and after his 
death she married James Piatt of Oswego, brother of Judge Piatt ; 
B. B. and R. R. Lansing were brothers. Another daughter was 
the wife of William M. Sands, purser in the United States navy. 
Another was the wife of Captain S. B. Griswolcl, of the United 
States army, (afterwai-ds the father-indaw of Professor S. F. B. 
Morse, of telegraph fame.) Another daughter was the wife of the 
late Thomas R. Walker of Utica. Sidney Breese, one of his sons, 
was born within half a mile of the place where E. K. Kane first 
saw the light, and about five years after Mr. Kane's birth. Sidney 
Breese attended Hamilton College, but graduated at Union, and 
soon after followed E. K. Kane to Illinois, and was admitted to 
the bar in that State before he was of age. When he was twenty- 
two years old he was appointed State attorney and held that office 
for five years, and then, in 1827, was appointed United States dis- 
trict attorney, and later postmaster of Kaskaskia, where he and Mr. 
Kane resided — all through the influence doubtless of Mr. Kane, who 
was then in the United States Senate. In 1829 Mr. Breese published 
in octavo form a volume of Supreme Court decisions for Illinois, 
which volume bears his name, and was the first book of that form 
published in that State. In 1835 he was elected circuit judge and 
in 1843 elected United States Senator from Illinois. Xo other 
instance of the kind can be found of two persons so near an age — 
born within half a mile of each other, moving in early life to a dis- 
tant territory, and both becoming United States Senators from the 



EEV. BETIIUEL DODD. , 99 

same State. In 1855 Mr. Breese was again elected circuit judge, 
and subsequently was made chief justice of Illinois. 

Rev. Bethuel Done. 

As I have named the first lawyers, the first merchants, and the 
first physician who located in Whitesboro, the next in order will be 
the first clergyman. An inscription upon a monument in Whites- 
boro cemetery tells us that the remains of Rev. Bethuel Dodd 
repose beneath, that he came in 1794 to Whitesboro from Orange, 
N. J., assisted in forming the first Presbyterian Church in the State 
west of Albany, that he lived at Whitesboro the remainder of his 
life, and died there April 12, 1804, at the age of thirty-seven years. 
Mr. Dodd was born at Bloomfield, N. J., graduated from Rutgers 
College in 1792, and the next year was licensed to preach. On 
the first day of April, 1793, a meeting was held in the barn of 
Hugh White, at which he presided, to take measures to form a 
religious society. Jonas Piatt, Thomas R. Gold, George Doolittle 
and others were a committee on resolutions. An organization was 
finally effected under the name of "The United Presbyterian 
Societies of Whitestown and Old Fort Schuyler." Among the 
first thirteen trustees were Jonas Piatt, Elizur Moseley, Thomas R. 
Gold, Amos Wetmore and Arthur Breese. In 1794, Rev. Bethuel 
Dodd, then twenty-seven years old, was called to be the first 
pastor of that church, then numbering fourteen members, and his 
first sermon to them was preached August 20th, of that year, in 
the tavern then kept by Daniel C. White. The installation 
services were held in an arbor improvised for the occasion, on or 
near what is now the " Public Green " in Whitesboro. At first, 
Mr. Dodd preached at Utica only once a month, and the remaining 
Sabbaths at Whitesboro, where he had much the largest congrega- 
tions; later, he alternated between the two places. Until a church 
edifice was erected, he preached in Mr. White's tavern, or in barns. 
In 1803, the Presbyterian Church edifice, 45 by GO feet, was 
erected on Main street, at a cost of $4,500, and in March, 1804, it 
was dedicated. In a very short time thereafter, Mr. Dodd 
sickened and died, and his was the first funeral held in that edifice. 
He died April 12, 1804. The wife of Mr. Dodd was Sarah Piers<*n, 
of Orange, N. J., a sister of the mother of Hon. John Stryker, of 
Rome, and of Rev. Isaac P. Stryker, of Whitesboro. She subse- 
quently married Mr. Ballard, and died in Whitesboro in 1828. 
Mr. and Mrs. Dodd were childless. When they moved to Whites- 
boro, they took up their residence in the log house along with 



100 W.HITESBOKO's GOLDEN AGE. 

Jonas Piatt and wife, but subsequently he erected a dwelling 
westerly of Thomas R. Gold's premises. 

President Dwight, in his " travels " through this section in 
1799 and later, speaks of Mr. Dodd as a very worthy and 
excellent person, who left behind him a name which is as the odor 
of sweet incense. Rev. John Taylor, in his missionary tour in 
1802 through this'part of the State, speaks of Mr. Dodd as a pious 
and valuable man, very intelligent, a sound Calviuist and very 
judicious. He makes this entry in his journal: " Preached for Mr. 
Dodd at Whitesboro ; about 250 persons present ; communion 
day; about forty members ; appearances good; in the afternoon 
preached at Utica; about 300 present; most of the persons are at 
the Borough. At Utica may be found ten or twelve different 
nations, and of almost all religions and sects, but the greater part 
are of no religion. The world is the great object with the body 
of the p?ople." The late Judge Seth B. Roberts, of Rome, who 
lived when a lad with Mr. Dodd, speaks of him as of fine personal 
appearance, of polite and polished manners and an able preacher. 

Dr. William Kirkpatrick. 

In 1795, there came from New Jersey to Whitesboro, the second 
physician of the place, who with his natural ability and skill, 
would have ranked among the best physicians in the State, had he 
closely followed his profession. It was Dr. William Kirkpatrick. 
He was born in New Jersey in 1768, was a son of a Presbyterian 
clergyman, graduated at Princeton College, studied medicine with 
the celebrated Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, and located in Whites- 
boro as above mentioned, boarding, while there, at the tavern 
kept by Colonel Daniel C. White. He was skillful as a physician, 
but his sympathies were so strong with the suffering and his 
horror of death so great, that he endeavored to avoid the duties 
of his calling, and graduated into other pursuits. In 1806, he was 
elected to Congress, over John Nicholson, of Herkimer, and while 
in Washington acquitted himself creditably, and Jjecame a great 
friend of William H. Crawford. About 1809 Mr. Kirkpatrick 
removed to Salina, was appointed in 1811 superintendent of the 
sah^ springs, and held that position until a year before his death. 
He died rather suddenly of cholera, in September, 1832, highly 
respected by the citizens of Onondaga county. 

Theodore Sill. 

In Goshen, Lynn and New Fairfield, Connecticut, were in the 
last century, numerous families by the name of Sill. One of those 



THEODORE SILL. 101 

families at Goshen was Dr. Elisha Sill. He was a graduate of 
Yale, a surgeon in the American army in 1777, at the surrender of 
Burgoyne, and for nearly fifty years was engaged in the practice 
of medicine. Theodore Sill was the second son of Dr. Elisha Sill. 
He graduated in 1797 from Yale College, when twenty years of 
age, and very soon after took up his residence in Whitesboro and 
became a law student in the office of Thomas R. Gold, who had 
married Wis sister. Mr. Sill was admitted to the Oneida Common 
Pleas'in December, 1800, having been previously admitted to the 
Supreme Court, and at once the law firm of Gold & Sill was formed. 
In 1802, Mr. Sill was appointed county treasurer, the second one 
appointed in the county, and was continued in that office until 
1810 when he was succeeded by William G. Tracy. In 1814 he 
was elected to the Assembly, and again in 1826 and again in 1827. 
He was appointed brigadier general of the State Militia, was an 
old friend of General Winfield Scott, and old residents relate 
visits made to General Sill at Whitesboro by General Scott and 
staff, and the sumptuous and elegant entertainments furnished 
on those occasions by General Sill to the hero of Lundy's Lane. 
Mt. Sill w r as rather tall in person, of stately figure, of polished and 
courtly manners, dignified bearing and of rather commanding 
presence. He was a good law T yer, a graceful, and persuasive 
speaker, and as an advocate befoi-e a jury, he was the superior of 
Mr. Gold. Ex-Judge Foster tells me of a case tried at the Rome 
court house which he heard Mr. Sill sum up for the plaintiff over 
sixty years ago. It was an action for assault and battery and false 
imprisonment, brought by one Barney Hoy (once a notable 
character of Rome), against Captain Welch, an United States 
officer at the Rome arsenal. The offense consisting in putting 
Hoy in irons and keeping him severely confined several days, for 
an alleged disobedience of orders. Judge Foster says the sum- 
ming up by General Sill was remarkable for its force, eloquence 
and touching pathos, and had great effect upon all, and particularly 
upon the jury, as they rendered a verdict of $1,000 for plaintiff — 
an unusually large verdict for those times, in such cases. Mr. 
Sill was not only an able lawyer, a persuasive jury advocate, and 
a successful politician, but he was largely interested in, and closely 
identified with the manufacturing interests in the county. He was 
an active co-operator in the establishment there of the first cotton 
mills in the State, and promoted similar enterprises in other 
localities. In 1810, he married Miss Eliza Mann, an educated and 
highly cultured woman whose family will hereafter be noticed. 

a 



102 WHITESBOEO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

Mr. Sill died at Whitesboro March 27, 1836, at the age of fifty- 
nine years; just eight days after the death of Samuel A. Talcott, 
who had been a law student in the office of Mr. Sill a quarter of a 
century before. Mr. Sill had nine children; five of them died 
"before reaching nine years of age. The only son of his who 
survived him died in 1842, at the age of twenty-four. His eldest 
daughter became the wife of Hon. Calvert Comstock, of Rome, 
too well and favorably known to need further mention. Sarah 
Gold Sill became the wife of Rev. Gordon Huntington, of Sag 
Harbor, and after her death in 1858, Mr. Huntington married her 
sister Charlotte. All of the children of Mr. Sill are dead. The 
daughters were educated, intelligent and refined, and were among 
the most cultured of Whitesboro's society, when it was at its best. 
Of all of Whitesboro's intelligent ladies, none were better 
informed, possessed greater conversational powers, had finer 
literary tastes and acquirements than Sarah Gold Sill. The widow 
of Theodore Sill died in Rome in April, 1847, and the remains of 
both, with those of five of their children, sleej) side by side in the 
Whitesboro cemetery. 

As this paper closes all I have to say of Whitesboro, prior to 
1800, a brief sketch of the condition and growth of that hamlet 
during the last decade of the last century may be of interest. 
Between 1790 and 1800, the population of the " Whitestown 
Country," increased by reason of immigration, more rapidly than 
at any former or subsequent period in its history. Elkanah 
Watson, who was an extensive traveler through Europe as well as 
through the United States, passed through the Mohawk valley 
several times between 1784 and 1800. On his visit in September, 
1788, he makes this entry in his journal. 

" The road from old Fort Schuyler to Whitesboro is as bad as possible, 
obstructed by broken bridges, logs and stumps, and my horse at every step 
sinking knee deep in the mud. I remained one day recruiting at Judge 
White's log house, and slept in his log barn with horses and other animals. 
Whitesboro is a promising new settlement, in the heart of a fine tract of 
country, and is just in its transition from a state of nature into civilization. 
The settlement commenced only three years since. It is astonishing what 
efforts are making to #ubdue the dense and murky forests. Log houses are 
already scattered in the midst of stumps, half burnt logs and girdled trees. 
I observed their log barns were well filled. At present, lots bordering on the 
river have advanced to $3 per acre — those lying a few miles back at $1 per 
acre. Settlers are continually pouring in from the Connecticut hive, which 
throws off its annual swarms of intelligent, industrious and enterprising 
emigrants. They already estimate 300 brother Yankees on their muster list. 
At Oriskany I passed 200 Indians, and after leaving the consecrated spot of 



EARLY CIRCUIT JUDGES. 103 

the Oriskany battle ground, which I thoroughly visited, I found myself soon 
after alone in the woods in the midst of a band of Indians ' as drunk as 
lords' " 

In September, 1791, Mr. Watson passed over the same route. 
He makes this entry in his journal : "Emigrants are swarming 
into these fertile regions in shoals, like the ancient Israelites, seek- 
ing the land of promise." Another writer states that in the winter 
"of 1795, 1,200 sleighs loaded with furniture and with men, 
women and children passed through Albany for the Whitestown 
Country" in three days; and that 500 were counted between sun- 
rise and sunset of February 28th of that year. I have heretofore 
mentioned the terms of court, Judge Piatt held in Whitesboro, 
and as a matter of interest and of future reference, I give the 
names of the judges who held the circuits, and the time 
of holding them in Whitesboro, up to the time the constitu- 
tion of 1821 went into effect. The June term of 1802 
was held by Judge Smith Thompson, in the school house. In 
September, 1803, by Jacob Radcliff. In June, 1805, by James 
Kent. In June, 1806, by Ambrose Spencer. In June, 1808, by 
Judge Kent; June, 1810, by Judge Spencer; September, 1812, by 
Judge Thompson. In June, 1814 and 1816 by W. W. Van Ness. 
At the term in 1816, Martin Van Buren, then attorney general of 
the State, attended, and was engaged in the trial of a couple of 
jury causes. In June, 1820, Judge John Woodworth held the 
court, and in May, 1823, Judge Spencer. Prior to June, 1808, the 
courts were held in the school house in Whitesboro. The first 
court held in the court house in that village was by Judge Kent, 
June, 1808. 

The Guiteatj Family. 

It has been already stated that Dr. Elizur Moseley, of Whites- 
boro, was the first physician who located in this part of the State. 
The second one who came was Dr. Norton Porter, who located in 
1791, at the age of twenty or twenty-one years, in what is now 
the town of Westmoreland, and for forty years followed his pro- 
fession ; he was father of Dr. H. N. Porter, now of New York 
Mills. In 1792, or a little earlier, there came another physician, 
the third one of this " Whitestown country," who pitched his tent 
a little to the east of what is now Deerfield Corners in this 
county. He was from Massachusetts; and at the time of his 
coming was twenty-seven years old, had a wife and two small 
children. On his way here he stopped for a while and either 



104 WHITESBORO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

studied or practiced his profession in Rensselaer county, but it 
would seem, concluded to push his way still further to the west- 
ward. This new comer was Dr. Francis Guiteau, Jr., a name not 
now unfamiliar to the American public, nor one likely to be soon 
forgotten. He was grandfather of him, who within the past year, 
has acquired such unenviable notoriety throughout the world. The 
Guiteau family were of Huguenot origin and were descendants of 
those exiles, whom the cruel religious persecutions of Louis XIV 
compelled to leave their homes to seek asylums in other quarters 
of the globe. This audience need hardly be reminded of the 
historical tact that the Huguenots were noted for their intense 
religious zeal and fervor; for their severe and rigid notions of 
morality ; for their skill in the mechanical arts ; for their thrift 
and habits of industry, and for their enterprise and public spirit. 
Those who fled to America for homes, number among their 
descendants, men who are noted for their exemplary habits, rare 
intelligence, stern virtues, and who have contributed in a remark- 
able degree to the growth, prosperity, intelligence and piety of 
the country. Of the seven presidents of the Continental Con- 
gress, three of them, Henry Laurens, Elias Boudinot and John 
Jay were of Huguenot families. Besides those, there were the 
Morgans of South Carolina; the Bayards of Delaware, Professor 
Agassiz, and the late President Garfield, who were of the same 
origin. The Guiteau family, for many successive generations 
have furnished to the world one or more members of the medical 
profession who were leading and prominent physicians in the com- 
munity in which they lived, as well as in the vicinage of their 
practice. They were as noted in this regard as the Mann and 
Capron families. The father of the one who thus located in Deer- 
field was himself a physician, and for years had been a leading 
one in Lanesboro and Pittsfield in Massachusetts. He was quite 
an old man, when his eldest son, who was named after him, came 
to this county; the father also came soon after, and died in 1814, 
at the age of seventy-seven. A brother of Francis Guiteau, Jr., 
as early as 1794, attended school in Clinton, later pursued and 
finished his medical studies in Massachusetts, and in 1802 located 
in Trenton, in this county, and there for nearly fifty years Dr. 
Luther Guiteau practiced his profession and was among the fore- 
most, most honored and respected of the physicians and citizens 
of this county. He was father of the present Dr. Luther 
Guiteau of that village. Another brother was Calvin Guiteau, a 
well known surveyor of the farms and first roads in Deerfield, who 



THE GUITEAU FAMILY. 105 

became .1 resident of that town as early as 1797, was elected in 
1798 the first commissioner of highways in Deerfield, and its 
supervisor in 1811 ; in 1817, he removed to Utica, in which place 
he died. Another brother was Samuel Guiteau,. who located in 
Trenton about 1808, and when seventeen years old, took up a 
tract of wild land in that town; he died in 1851 at the age of 
sixty-two years. He was for years a member of the Presbyterian 
church. Another brother was Rev. Norman Gniteau; he joined 
the Baptist church in Whitesboro in 1813, as the records of that 
society \ attest. In 1819 and 1820 he was pastor of the Baptist 
church in Trenton. 

I have thus far digressed from the main subject of this sketch 
because I deemed that any facts which are given in relation to 
this family will be of interest. From what I can gather, I infer 
that Francis Guiteau, Jr., was not licensed to practice medicine 
when he first came to this county ; and so conclude from the 
notice of his death in 1825 in the Baptist Register, which speaks 
of him as having been a practicing physician for nearly or about 
thirty years. When Deerfield was organized into a town — at the 
first town meeting held in the Spring of 1798, Dr. Francis Guiteau, 
Jr., was elected its first supervisor, re-elected in 1799 and again in 
1800. About 1801 or 1802 he moved across the river into Utica, 
and there practiced medicine and a portion of the time kept a 
drug store, some of the time with Dr. Solomon G. Wolcott as 
partner, until' 1815. In the last named year, Dr. Guiteau bought 
of W. G. Tracy, the premises next westerly of the present 
residence of C. M. Dennison, and thereupon removed to Whites- 
boro, and resided in that village until his death, which occurred 
after a brief illness. April 18, 1825, at the age of fifty-nine years 
and five months. Dr. Guiteau was a worthy and respected 
citizen, and as a physician, stood at the head of his profession. 
He was one of the founders in 1806 of the Oneida County Medical 
society, and was elected its president in 1808, and again in 1809. 
He was twice elected its vice-president, and three times chosen 
censor. In the outset of this sketch, mention was made of the 
religious tendencies and the enthusiasm of the Huguenots. The 
records of the Baptist church at Whitesboro show that Dr. 
Guiteau united with that church in 1809, and all accounts agree 
that he was a firm believer in, and a zealous advocate of the 
doctrines of that church. A correspondent writes me from a dis- 
tant State, that Dr. Guiteau had such decided convictions as to 
the form of baptism by immersion, that he was heard to declare 



106 WHITESBORO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

that if an angel of light should tell him any other form was rfght, 
he would not believe it. Dr. Bagg in Ins " Pioneers of Utica" 
speaks of Dr. Gnitean, " as a zealous and leading Baptist and 
sensitive to any opposition to his religious views ; he was also a 
strong democrat, genial and pleasant in manners, but decided in 
his opinions and free in the expression of them. He was about 
six feet high, rather spare of flesh, erect and active, of firm fibre 
and well fitted to endure labor and fatigue. In the war of 1812, 
he invented an explosive missile, designed to sink ships, for 
which he received a grant from the government." The article in 
the Baptist Register before alluded to, supposed to have been 
written by Rev. Elon Galusha, a former editor of that paper, and 
who was in charge of the Baptist church at Whitesboro at the 
time of the doctor's death, spoke of the deceased " as one of the 
brightest luminaries in his profession, a friend to humanity, an 
affectionate husband, an indulgent parent, and the possessor of an 
active mind and memory which few can boast, and one who died 
in full faith in Ins Redeemer and confidence in the Christian 
religion." Dr. Guiteau was the father of eleven children, ten of 
whom, five sons and five daughters, lived to maturity. The 
given names of three of the sons were the same as those of their 
uncles, and it was argued on the assassin's trial at Washington, 
that as the names of Calvin, Luther and Abram seemed to be 
favorite ones in the Guiteau family, it afforded evidence of the 
tendency to the religious spirit and enthusiasm which char- 
acterized their Huguenot ancestry. 

I will name the children in the order of their births, and by 
mentioning the diseases of which they died, light may be thrown 
upon the (pies', ion as to insanity in the family, and as to whether 
it was brain trouble, or a disease of other organs that caused 
death. Mary was the first born, and was about two years old 
when her father came to the " Whitestown country;" in 1812 she 
married Jehu McNeil, then of Charlotte, Vermont, but the 
McNeil family subsequently lived across the river in Deerfield in 
this county, as old residents inform me. He was father of Judge 
John McNeil, of Port Huron, Michigan. An inscription on a 
tombstone in the Whitestown cemetery tells us that Mary died 
August 27, 1816, in the twenty-seventh year of her ago; she died 
of consumption. Hannah was the next born, and was about a 
year old when Dr. Guiteau located in Deerfield; she was never 
married ; after her father's death she lived with her brother 
Calvin at Watertown, and later with her brother Luther at 
Freeport, where she died of cholera in October, 1854. 



THE GUITEAU FAMILY. 107 

The third child, but the first son, was Julius C. He was 
born the next year after his lather moved to this section. A 
correspondent, now seventy-seven years old, writes me that he 
well remembers Julius, when the latter was in his teens and clerk 
in the drug store of Dr. Wolcott, of Utica. In September, 
1815, when twenty-two years old, h"e married Mary Ann, the 
eldest daughter of Dr. Moseley, and soon after moved to Buffalo, 
and went into the drug business in that place. A letter from the 
post office department gives me the information that Jubus C. 
Guiteau was postmaster of Buffalo from May 6, 1818, to April 25, 
1831. It will be remembered that William A. Moseley, a brother- 
in-law of Julius C. Guiteau, went to Buffalo from Whitesboro, 
about 1818, and subsequently became a well known lawyer and 
member of Congress in that place. Julius C. subsequently moved 
west, and died of consumption in Freepori, in August, 1845. His 
widow died in August, 1853, in Whitesboro, and her remains are 
in the cemetery lot of her father in that place. Old remembrancers 
of Whitesboro inform me that Julius C. had no children. A 
Roman informs me that in 1838 he was living in Batavia, in this 
State, and that he knew a young man there about twenty-one 
years old by the name of Julius Guiteau. The name and age of 
this young man would indicate him to be the eldest son of Julius 
C. ; but it may have been another family, or the old residents of 
Whitesboro may have forgotten, or never have known, whether or 
not any phildren w r ere born unto Julius, as he left Whitesboro so 
soon after his marriage and never lived there afterwards. 
Sophronia was the next child born, who lived to maturity. In 
October, 1818, she became the wife of Captain Freedom Tibbetts, 
formerly deputy sheriff in this county, and who over fifty years 
ago kept the American Hotel in Rome. She died of consumption 
in August, 1822, at the age of twenty-six, leaving two children. 
The daughter is dead, but the son named after Francis Guiteau 
is living in Milwaukee, a wealthy and respected citizen of that 
place. Anna was the next child; she was born in 1798. When a 
young woman she taught in Wbitesboro a school for young girls. 
In January, 1829, she married Orsamus H. Parker, a music dealer 
and teacher, and lived a while, as I learn, in Oswego. A cor- 
respondent from the west writes me that in 1835 Anna was a 
widow with three children, and residing at Ann Arbor, but that 
within a year or so after, she moved away and went east, and in 
1852 was living in Jefferson county. It was stated by counsel on 
the Guiteau trial that Mrs. Parker returned to Oswego insane, and 



108 WHITESBORo's GOLDEN AGE. 

died in that condition. Correspondents at Watertown, who well 
knew Anna in her life-time, write me that she lived for a while 
and died in Watertown and is buried there, and speak highly of 
her; no mention is made of her insanity. Another correspondent, 
writes me that Anna died of cancer in the breast, and makes no 
mention of her being insane. She left three children; the eldest 
son was quite intemperate, and as appsared on the Guiteau trial, 
died in an insane asylum; another son is living out west, and the 
only daughter died a few years ago in San Francisco. 

Francis W. was the second son of Dr. Guiteau, and he is the 
one of whom mention was made on the assassin's trial as having 
been engaged when a young man in a duel, and die;.! in an insane 
asylum. A correspondent, now eighty-six years old, a former 
resident of Utica, and who well knew and well remembers Dr. 
Guiteau and all of his children, and whose mind and memory 
seem unimpaired, writes to the following effect of that affair: 
When quite young, Frank went to live with his brother Julius in 
Buffalo. He became involved in a love affair, and challenged his 
rival to fight a duel. As a joke upon the challenger, the pistols 
were loaded only witli powder* and the shirt bosom of the rival 
stained with blood, or with a liquid resembling blood, and then 
concealed from sight. The parties met, Frank fired and the rival 
fell; as the " bloody shirt " was exposed to view, Frank thought 
he had committed murder, and was so frightened and conscience 
stricken, or else ashamed and mortified at the hoax played upon 
him, that his nervous system was prostrated, and his health 
became so much impaired, that he returned to his home in Whites- 
boro; afterwards he went codfishing or on a whaling voyage. 
Another correspondent, a former resident of Whitesboro, writes 
me that he well remembers Frank, when the latter was a young 
man and expert clerk in the office of Thomas Walker, of Utica — 
that Frank wrote a splendid hand, was of pleasing address 
and mannei's, dressed well, stylish and "nobby" in his appearance. 
That correspondent further writes, that in 1828 or 1829 Frank 
came to him in New York city, rather " cranky' 1 in appearance, 
and saying that he had just returned from a three years' cruise as 
captain's clerk ; that was the last that correspondent ever saw of 
him. The records of the Bloomingdale Asylum show that Francis 
W. Guiteau died insane in that institution in December, 1829, at 
the age of twenty-nine, his insanity caused by mortification at 
fighting a sham duel. He was in that asylum three months. It 
was stated on the trial at Washington that Francis had been 



THE GUITEAU FAMILY. 1 0& 

insane fourteen years; that would make him about fifteen when 
that sham duel was fought. Julia was the next child; she was 
horn in Utica in March, 1802, which would indicate that the time 
her father moved to that place from Deerfield, was as early as 
1801, or else the fore part of the year 1802. In September, 1825, 
she was married by Rev. John Frost, to William Sumner 
Maynard, a nephew and clerk of Dr. Moseley, and also a cousin of 
William H. Maynard. His mother was a sister of Dr. Moseley. 
Soon alter the marriage, he moved to Oswego, and commenced 
the dry goods business there. In September, 1830, he moved to 
Ann Arbor, and there became one of the most wealthy, enterpris- 
ing, public spirited and respected citizens'of the place. He died 
in 1866. His wife, after a week's illness, died in January, 1856, of 
consumption, ending in an attack of pneumonia. Correspondents 
speak of Mrs. Maynard in the highest terms, as an active worker 
in the church, a lovely Christian character, a benevolent and kind 
hearted, and a most estimable woman. In fact, all of my informa- 
tion as regards the daughters of Dr. Guiteau is to the same effect ; 
and wherever mention or allusion is made to insanity in the 
family, or any of its members by. any of my informants, that fact 
is not withheld in the sketches. Mrs. Maynard had three children, 
all now living ; one Mrs. Wilson, of Leadville, Colorado, and one 
Mrs. Lansing, of Michigan. The youngest, after ten or twelve years 
of age, became weak minded and imbecile, caused as the evidence on 
the Guiteau trial showed, by reason of frequent mesmeric opera- 
tions upon her when a young girl. 

Calvin was the next born ; when a lad he was clerk for the 
Walcotts. Calvin afterwards learned the jeweler's trade of Mr. 
Wells, in Whitesboro, and about 1828 located in Watertown, 
Jefferson county. About 1830, he married Miss Zaire A. Komaine, 
whose parents resided on Carlton Island. Calvin was a very 
ingenious mechanic, and manufactured not only valuable time 
pieces, but surgical instruments and other fine pieces of workman- 
ship. Calvin died in September, 1846, at the age of" forty-one 
years. He was the father of five or six children, all of them dead 
but two — one Mrs. Corbin, of De Pauville, in that county, and the 
other a son, (Henry Clay Guiteau), a worthy resident of St. Louis, 
and for eleven years past, conductor on the Iron Mountain rail- 
road. 

Abram-Eloodgood Guiteau was the next, and was born in 1807. 
He too was dry goods clerk, and as he grew to manhood engaged 
in mercantile pursuits. Not far from 1838 he married Miss Emily 



110 WIHTESBORO's GOLDEN AGE. 

Redfield, daughter of Deacon Redfield of Watertown. My 
information is, that about that time he was in the dry- 
goods trade in Pulaski, Oswego county, as one of the firm of 
Mansfield & Guiteau, and that about 1843 he located in Sacketts 
Harbor, and was a merchant therefrom that time until about 1853, 
when he move;! west and located at Freeport. In the early part 
of the rebellion, he drifted south as a soldier, and was at Little 
Rock and other points south, but lived to return. He is one whom 
counsel on the Guiteau trial spoke of as having become in the latter 
years of his life quite out of joint in his habits and his mind weak 
and imbecile. He died a few years ago at the residence of his 
brother Luther, in Freeport. He had four or five children, but 1 
am not able to trace them. 

Luther W. Guiteau was the youngest of the family and was born 
in March, 1810. He was the father of the one who, within the 
pasl year, lias brought the name so prominently into notice. He 
was steady and conscientious, had experienced religion and united 
with the church. In those days the great and about the highest 
ambitimi of the generality of young men was to become merchants, 
and so Luther Guiteau entered a dry goods store, graduated there- 
from, went west and became a merchant in Ann Arbor. About 
1835 he married Miss Jane A. Howe, daughter of Major John 
Howe, who was lor some time a partner in Ann Arbor of William 
S. Maynard. Mr. Guiteau took his wile to Ann Arbor, where he 
was in prosperous business, and there two of his children, Mrs. 
George Scoville and John W. Guiteau were born. In 1838 he 
removed to Freeport, and there, for the last six years of her life, 
his wife was much out of health, a portion of the time confined to 
her bed. Three more children were born, one of whom was Charles 
Jules Guiteau, in September, 1841. She died about 1847, and a 
few years thereafter Mr. Guiteau married for his second wife a 
widow who was formely a resident of Cazenovia, in Madison 
county. Of this last marriage two children were born, both resi- 
dents of Freeport, the son named after his father, and in a bank 
in that place. Luther W. Guiteau died in Freeport in 1880, at 
the age of seventy years. All the information which comes to me 
of the family, is to the effect, that Luther had more of that stern 
and rigid morality, more of the intense religious zeal and fervor, 
than any of the other children. In this regard, he may have more 
closely resembled his father, than did any of his brothers.or sisters. 
This element in him, with a similar spirit in his wife, may have 
been inherited by one or more of their children. But all accounts 



HENRY R. STORRS. Ill 

agree, that whatever Luther's religious view may have been, he 
was a very amiable, kind hearted, conscientious, good dispositioned 
and upright man ; that for years, he was the trusted cashier of a 
bank in Freeport, and universally respected and esteemed. A 
photograph taken of Luther a few years before his death, has been 
shown me, and it would indicate a person of intelligence, firm and. 
decisive in his views, unbending in his purposes, unyielding in his 
convictions, yet a kind hearted and amiable man. 

The widow of Dr. Francis Guiteau, and mother of the foregoing 
children, lived with her son Julius, at Buffalo, awhile after her 
husband's death, but died at Watertown many years ago, at the 
age of seventy or eighty years, and she is buried at that place. 

Henry R. Storks. 

In 1804 there was much excitement in the "Black River 
Country," north of us, over the near prospect that a new county 
was to be formed from Oneida, and as to the location of the county 
seat. Champion, Brownville, Watertown, Redtield, Lowville and 
Martinsburgh were all sharp competitors for the prize, and each 
locality had its warm and influential friends. At Champion resided 
Noadiah Hubbard, the first settler, Moss Kent, brother of the 
Chancellor, and himself a strong man, Egbert Ten Eyck, (father- 
in-law of Judge Mullin,) afterwards member of congress and 
county judge; and besides, the influence of the landed proprietors 
was exerted in behalf of their town. In 1804, while this excitement 
was at its height, Henry R. Storrs graduated from Yale College at 
the age of seventeen years. All accounts agree that he was 
located for awhile at Champion village, that he read law with 
Gold & Sill, at Whitesboro, and that he was admitted to the bar 
about 1809; but I cannot learn whether he was at Champion or 
Whitesboro first. I conjecture, however, that he first went to 
Champion and read law with Mr. Ten Eyck, or Moss Kent, in the 
hope that that place would be selected for the county seat; but 
finding that two counties (Jefferson and Lewis) instead of one 
were formed, and that Champion became the county seat of neither, 
he concluded that village (even if it was the seat of his father's 
landed possessions,) afforded a poor field for his talents, and that he 
then came to Whitesboro, finished his legal studies, and became a 
permanent resident of that village. 

At that time Whitesboro loomed up more prominently than any 
place in the State west of Albany. It was a half-shire town. The 
county clei'k, treasurer and surrogate had their offices and lived 



112 

there, as did also the Member of Congress and many other leading- 
men. In common parlance, Whitestown was then "booming," and 
there Henry R. Storrs located, not far* from 1809. In 1810, he 
married Esther White, granddaughter of the pioneer settler and 
the first white child born in the " Whitestown Country." When 
Mr. IStorrs commenced practicing law there, he was but a year or 
so past his twenty-first birthday; yet he rose rapidly to notice 
and to a prominent position at the bar and in politics. Fortune 
C. White was admitted to the bar about 1814, and the two formed 
a partnership, and had a profitable and extensive law business. It 
was the third law firm in Whitesboro whose members were 
brothers-in-law, and who were also influential and prominent 
politicians and office-holders, viz. : Piatt & Breese, Gold & Sill, 
Storrs & White. 

In 1810, Mr. Storrs was nominated for Congress. His com- 
petitor was Nathan Williams, of Utica. At that time Mr. Storrs 
was but twenty-nine years old. For eight years (or one-half the 
time since Oneida county was formed) Whitesboro had had 
the representative in Congress. That election resulted in favor of 
Mr. Storrs by 278 majority. In 1818 Mr. Storrs was re-nominated 
and re-elected without any formidable opposition. His course in 
Congress in 1820 in favor of the Missouri Compromise,* was dis- 
tasteful to his constituency, and he was not re-nominated in that 
year. In 1822 he was picked up and nominated by the party to 
which theretofore he had always been opposed. His opponent was 
Hon. Ezekiel Bacon, father of ex-Judge. Wm. J. Bacon. After a 
sharp contest and a poll of many thousands of votes, Mr. Storrs 
was elected by only filty-five majority — the closest vote, I think, 
ever cast in this county between opposing candidates for Congress. 
In 1824 Mr. Storrs was re-nominated and elected the fourth time, 
beating James Lynch, his opponent, by over 1,000 majority. In 
1820 he ran again against Fzekiel Bacon, and was lor the fifth 
time elected; this time by over 2,300. In 1828 he again ran, and 
was elected by 234 majority over Greene C. Bronson. This was 
the sixth time Mr. Storrs was elected — more times than any other 
congressman from this county. While holding this office, March 
9, 1825, he was appointed First Judge of the old Common Pleas 
of this county, and held that offics until January, 1830, when he 
was succeeded by Chester Hayden. 

The residence of Mr. Storrs, in Whitesboro, was opposite the 

*He was to a large extent its originator and earliest and inost powerful 
advocate.— Bacon's Early Bar of Oneida County. 



HENRY R. STORES. 113 

Court House, and on the northeasterly side of Main street. 
Tradition has it, that it had been the early residence of Mr. 
Breese, and that the latter erected the house. Of this I have 
doubts, for it was land which Judge Hugh White had conveyed to 
Fortune C. White and Esther (White) Storrs, and it is doubtful if 
it ever passed out of the family, until Mr. and Mrs. Storrs sold it 
in 1833 to Rev. Mr. Coville, a Baptist clergyman at Whitesboro. 
The latter the next year deeded that old homestead to Fortune C. 
White, and the latter in 1847 to the late Thos. H. Flandrau. 
About 1832, Mr. Storrs removed to New York, and opened a law 
office in that city. 

I have alluded to Mr. Storrs 1 political career, and have hardly 
mentioned his legal abilities or professional standing. It is proper 
to say that as a jury advocate, he had no equal in the county, and 
but very i'^w in the State. He was tall, of commanding figure 
and presence, dignified in bearing, graceful in manners, with a 
voice remarkable for power, as well as for sweetness and melody. 
He was fluent in speech, apt and felicitous in questions and 
expression, classical and chaste in his thoughts, and his eloquent, 
ringing and well rounded sentences were well calculated to 
enrapture and captivate a jury. He was also an excellent lawyer, 
and combined in a greater degree than any other lawyer in central 
New York, the legal acumen of the jurist with the brilliancy of 
an advocate. Henry Clay told ex-Judge Foster when the latter 
was in Congress in 1837-8, that Henry R. Storrs was the most 
eloquent debater he ever heard on the floor of the House. Ex- 
Judge Gridley told me many incidents in the professional career 
of Mr. Storrs, demonstrating his great power and influence over 
juries. Judge Gridley said Mr. Storrs was the most brilliant 
advocate he ever heard. He related a summing up of Mr. Storrs 
in the Rome court house about 1828, in behalf of a plaintiff" in a 
noted crim. con. case, wherein Mr. Storrs, in his appeal to the jury 
for large damages, deprecated the effect upon the community if 
the verdict was not among the thousands, and if it was not, he 
invoked the lightning of heaven to fall upon that court house and 
shiver it to atoms, so that not one brick or stone should stand 
above another, nor a vestige remain of a place where an American 
jury had so lightly punished such violators of law. Judge Gridley 
said it was the most powerful and thrilling appeal he ever heard. 

Mr. Storrs had five children, all of whom outlived him. His 
youngest child and only daughter Eiiza, was in early life in 
delicate health and consumptively inclined. In July, 1837, he, 



114 WIIITESBORO's GOLDEX AGE. 

with her and with his wife, were at the Pavillion Hotel at New 
Haven, Conn., for the purpose of improving his invalid daughter's 
health by the breezes off Long Island Sound. In the evening of 
July 29th, Mr. Storrs ascended the stairs to the cupola of the 
hotel to view a fire which had broken out in the city; while going- 
down stairs he complained of faintness and sat down to rest; on 
recovering he proceeded on his way to the drawing room, and 
while walking up and down in the rooms of the hotel, in cheerful 
conversation, he was taken suddenly ill, fell to the floor and expired 
immediately. An artery was ruptured. And thus, at the age of forty- 
nine years, Henry R. Storrs was cut off in his prime, in the midst of 
his professional career and usefulness, and in the full vigor of an 
unclouded intellect. He was buried in that city, and at meetings 
of the bar and of fellow-citizens in New Haven, New York and 
elsewhere, and through the press, were voiced the deep feelings of 
sorrow everywhere felt at such a loss. His daughter died August 
27, 1837, not a month after the death of her father, at the age of 
twenty-two, and the two are buried by each other's side. I might 
mention here that a sister of Mr. Storrs, was the wife Governor 
Joseph Trumbull, of Connecticut : a brother of his read law 
with Henry R. in Whitesboro, returned to Connecticut to practice 
law, and was a Member of Congress for six years, and Judge of 
the Supreme Court of that State from 1840 until his death in 1861. 
Of the four sons of Henry R. Storrs, Henry Lemuel graduated at 
Hamilton College, entered the ministry, and in 1836 became 
an Episcopal minister, and was located for a while at Xew 
Hartford in this county, but afterwards at Yonkers, where 
he died in 1852, at the age of fifty-one. His wife was a 
sis-ter of Bishop Kip. Fortune K., another son, located in 
California, and- was connected with the Pacific Mail Steamship 
Company and died unmarried in December, 1853, at the age of 
forty-four. His remains are in the Yuba Cemetery on the Pacific 
Slope. William Champion was another son; he graduated from 
college, read law, and was admitted to the bar and located in 
Rochester and was United States Commissioner. He died July 14 r 
1853, at the age of fifty seven years; his remains are in the 
cemetery at Mt. Hope. Peyton R., another son, was a farmer 
and lived many years in Trenton, but many years ago moved to 
Wisconsin, and died at Milwaukee June 13, 1855, at the age 
of thirty-seven ; his remains were taken to Mt. Hope. 

The widow of Henry R. Storrs outlived her whole family. 
Toward the close of her life she took up her residence with her old 



SAMUEL A. TALCOTT. 115 

friend, Mrs Sarah Eames, in New Hartford in this county. Mrs. 
Eames was the oldest daughter and only surviving child of the 
late Jedediah Sanger. She died August 12, 1861, at the age of 
eighty-three years, and her funeral took place from her late 
residence at 3 p. m. Thursday, August 15th. That same night 
there was another death in that dwelling. The two who had seen 
this country when it was a wilderness, and had lived to witness 
its growth and prosperity, who were schoolmates in girlhood, 
companions in later years, and friends through life, and who had 
outlived their day and generation, were not long separated at 
death. Before the sun had risen on the morrow, all that was 
mortal of Esther Storrs had ceased to live. She died at the age 
of seventy-six. In that quiet rural home, within sight and sound 
of the murmuring waters of that busy stream where their ancestors 
settled, and upon which they erected so many thriving industries, 
the eldest daughter and only surviving child of the pioneer settler of 
New Hartford, and the first white born child of all of this " Whites- 
town Country," passed their last days together in seclusion, cpiite 
unnoticed, almost forgotten by the world; and there this aged 
couple died, but a few days apart. ■ There is surely a singular 
coincidence and a touching appropriateness in the ending of these 
two lives. The remains of Mrs. Storrs were taken to Mt. Hope 
for interment. 

Samuel A. Talcott. 

Whenever Henry R. Storrs is mentioned as once a resident of 
this county, and as the ablest jury advocate of his day in Central 
New York, the name of Samuel A. Talcott comes to mind, for he 
was a cotemporary of Mr. Storrs, a resident of Whitesboro for a 
while, and the ablest lawyer in the county, and not surpassed by 
any in the State or nation. Mr. Talcott was born in Hartford, 
Connecticut, and was left an orphan at an early age. When 
fourteen years of age he attended Colchester (Connecticut) 
Academy, thence passed to Williams College, where he graduated 
in 1809 at the age of twenty years. Soon thereafter, he married a 
sister of Col. John Ledyard, of Revolutionary fame, and about the 
time of his marriage, moved to Whitesboro, and finished his legal 
studies in the office of Gold & .Sill. In 1812 he moved to 
Lowville, in Lewis county, and formed a law partnership with 
Isaac W. Bost wick ; the latter prior to 1800 was a tutor in the 
family of Livingston at Poughkecpsie, whose daughters, Arthur 
Breese and Jud^e Jonas Piatt married. In 1816, Mr. Talcott 



116 WHITESBOEO's GOLDEN AGE. 

removed to Utica, and formed a partnership with William H. 
Maynard, who was a schoolmate of his in college, and who 
subsequently became a star of the first magnitude in the legal 
galaxy of the State. Mr. Talcott at once took front rank in the 
profession in this county and in the State, as evidenced by the fact 
that in February, 1821, at the age of thirty-one, lie was appointed 
Attorney General of the State. This appointment, it is said, was 
made through the influence and efforts of Martin Van Buren, who 
was then an important factor in the politics of the State and 
nation. Mr. Van Buren had been six days before elected to the 
United States Senate, and as he had ambitious aspirations and far- 
reaching sagacity, be sought to attach to his interests the rising 
and leading young men of the State. About that same time Mr. 
Van Buren was instrumental in procuring the appointment of John 
Savage as Comptroller (afterwards Chief Justice) and Samuel 
Young and other young men to offices. Judge Piatt, with a 
peculiar wink, said at the time to a friend: "This is an age of 
•young men." On the appointment of Mr. Talcott he took up his 
residence in Albany, and the fact that he succeeded in the 
Attorney Generalship such a brilliant lawyer as Thomas J. 
Oakley, very naturally attracted towards him the' eyes of the bar, 
and invoked criticism on the appointment. At that time the State 
numbered among its leading luminaries such men as Thomas 
Addis Emmett, John Wells, John C. Spencer, Ogden Hoffman, 
Elisha Williams, Daniel Cady, David B. Ogden, John V. Henry, 
and Abrain Van Vechten; and yet, Mr. Talcott proved himself 
the peer of the brightest and the host of them. He was often 
engaged in important causes, where great principles of law were 
involved, and the closest reasoning and the finest discrimination 
were required to be made. He was not eloquent before a jury like 
Mr. Storrs, yet his mind was clear and logical; he was fluent in 
speech and expression, and forcible in language and gestures; if 
he did not captivate juries by appeals to their feelings, he 
generally won their judgments and verdicts by the superior force 
and great power of his reasoning. But it was in appellate courts, 
where abstruse legal questions, or groat principles of law were 
involved and discussed, that he shone to greater advantage, and 
where he was without a superior, and some think without a peer 
in the land. Daniel Webster, Martin Van Buren, and others, 
equally capable of judging, have expressed opinions placing Mr, 
Talcott among the foremost lawyers in America. It was in a case 
in'the United States Supreme Court, in 1829, that Mr. Talcott was 



SAMUEL A. TALCOTT. 117 

pitted against Mr. Webster, arid came off victorious. It was the 
case known as the " Sailor's Snug Harbor," and it was by reason 
of Mr. Talcott's masterly argument that that institution has now 
an existence in New York, and ranks among the foremost charities 
in that city. That case has a traditionary history, because of 
incidents connected with it. As is well known, Mr. Talcott had 
become quite dissipated, and grave apprehensions were entertained 
as to whether he would be able to appear in court and argue the 
case when it was reached. He had been considerably irregular in 
his habits for a number of days previously, but the day the case 
w r as reached, Mr. Talcott strode into the court room, attired as was 
his wont, with scrupulous care and neatness, showing no sign of 
dissipation, and made one of the greatest arguments ever listened 
to in that court room. A gentleman, who forty years ago was a 
member of the Court of Last Resort in this State, informed me 
that a few years after the occurrence of the above argument, Mr. 
Talcott was engaged to argue an important case before that court. 
For some days before the case was reached, Mr. Talcott had been 
sadly tippling at some of the low groggeries in the suburbs of 
Albany, and it was feared he would not be present to take care of 
the case. But the day the case was called, he came into court 
dressed with great care, his face smoothly and cleanly shaven, 
showing no signs of dissipation, except a slight redness of his 
cheeks; his mind was clear and active, and he made a most 
masterly argument before the Court of Errors at Albany. 

Mr. Talcott was about five feet ten, of medium size, erect in his 
carriage, of dignified manners and bearing, and rather distant and 
taciturn in his behavior. As before stated, he was first appointed 
Attorney General in 1821; he was reappointed in February, 1823, 
under the constitution of 1821, and in February, 1829, was suc- 
ceeded by Greene C. Bronson, another Utican, aud the latter in 
January, 183G, by Samuel Beardsley, still another Utican. About 
1830, Mi\ Talcott removed to New York, and died in that city 
March 19, 1836, at the early age of forty-seven years, in the midst 
of a legal career which, but for his irregular habits, would have 
been one of the most brilliant of any in the nation. Within a 
week thereafter Theodore Sill (in whose office Mr. Talcott had 
read law a quarter of a century before,) died at his home in 
Wliitesboro. Mr. Talcott was twice married; by his first wife 
one child was born, the present Judge John Ledyard Talcott, of 
Buffalo. 



118 WHITESBOEO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

Rev. John Frost. 

There were a number of earnest and learned divines who located 
at Whitesboro in the early part of its history. Among the num- 
ber may be mentioned Elder Stephen Parsons, who in 1796 formed 
the first Baptist Church of the place, and remained until 1802. 
He was succeeded by Elder Caleb Douglass, who was pastor from 
1802 to 1815; next came Rev. Elder Elon Galusha, who was 
pastor from 1815 to 1831 — all faithful and able divines. As has 
been heretofore stated Rev. Bethuel Dodd located in the village 
in 1794, and was the first 'pastor of the Presbyterian Church 
there; he was succeeded in the fall of 1804 by Rev. James 
Carnahan, (afterwards President of Princeton College,) who 
remained until 1812. I think no one of the ministers who located 
in Whitesboro, remained as long as, or had a higher standing, or 
was more widely known than Rev. John Frost. 

Mr. Frost was called in November, 1812, to succeed Mr. Carnahan 

i 
in the pastorate of the Presbyterian Church of that village. At 

that time he was an unmarried man of but twenty-four years of 
age. He was born in Williamsburg, Mass., and when eighteen 
years old graduated at Middlebury College, and four years later 
from Andover Theological Seminary. In May, 1810, he entered 
the ministry, and soon after engaged in the effort to awaken in 
the churches an interest in foreign missions, a subject in which he 
was much enlisted, and to which he pledged himself while pursu- 
ing his theological studies. At that work he labored in the 
principal places in New England and New York, and so great was 
his zeal and enthusiasm in that field of labor that he declined 
pastoral calls from Danbury, Conn., and from Braintree and 
Williamstown, Mass. He assisted in forming in Boston the first 
society (the "A. B. C. F. M.") on foreign missions; and could he 
have lived to this day, and witnessed the immense field now 
occupied by that society and the grand results worked out in 
foreign lands, he would have felt that his labors had not been in 
vain. Before his call, one minister had supplied the pulpits of the 
Presbyterian Churches at Whitesboro and Utica. On Mr. Frost 
coming the society was divided, and he supplied the pulpit at 
Whitesboro. Mr. Frost was ordained March 13, 1813, and I have 
before me the ordination sermon preached on the occasion by the 
Rev. Azel Backus, D. D., then President of Hamilton College. 
The pamphlet was printed by Ira Merrill, of Utica, and the sub- 
ject was "Ministerial Fidelity," and from the text in Isaiah 58: 1. 



REV. JOHN FROST. 119 

Mr. Frost continued pastor of that church for twenty years, and 
during his labors several hundreds were converted, and many 
gathered into the Christian fold. By his advice, the Presbyterian 
Churches at Oriskany and Yorkville were formed, and the members 
of those congregations mainly taken from the parent church at 
Whitesboro. Mr. Frost was a ready and active co-operator with 
Rev. G. W. Gale in the founding at Whitesboro of the "Manual 
Labor School," later known as " Oneida Institute," and now 
as " Whitestown Seminary." He rendered valuable assistance in 
collecting funds for the support of that institution, and in 1833 
resigned his pastorate to devote his whole time to soliciting money 
to carry on and sustain that educational enterprise. His extensive 
acquaintance in New England and in New York, and the un- 
bounded confidence reposed in him by all, resulted in crowning 
his efforts with great success. When the institution came under 
the controlling influence of Rev. Beriah Green, whose views on 
the temperance and slavery questions were so much in advance of 
the age that the school lost the friendship of a great many of its 
former friends, Mr. Frost withdrew from that work, and returned 
to the ministry, and for four years was settled as pastor at 
Elmira. When he left that place, he declined a settlement else- 
where, meanwhile supplying vacant pulpits. He was supplying 
the pulpit at Water ville, in this county, retaining his residence at 
Whitesboro, when he took cold while riding on horseback between 
the two places, the cold terminated in pleurisy of which he died 
in Waterville March 1, 1842, at the age of fifty-four. His last 
words were, ' ; God reigns and always has reigned." His remains 
are in the Whitesboro cemetery. Those yet living, who remem- 
ber Mr. Frost, speak of him as a preacher, always clear, logical, 
forcible and convincing, and at times truly eloquent. Hi?, great 
aim was to enlighten and persuade, not to dazzle or amuse. He 
was earnest in manner, tireless as a worker, and a great friend of 
the cause of temperance and of the slave ; and in that period of 
our country's history, when excitement was high on those 
questions, and it cost a man his place, and sometimes his life, 
to speak out boldly, Mr. Frost was an open and bold worker, and 
by pen and voice did what he could to erase from our country's 
escutcheon the stigma that we were a slave-holding people and a 
nation of drunkards. By his patient endurance, modest heroism 
and stainless integrity he won a name and reputation as a citizen, 
Christian, minister and philanthropist that will endure as long as 
philanthropy and piety shall be respected or reverenced upon 



120 whites boko's golden age. 

■earth. For thirteen years he was trustee of Hamilton College and 
rendered valuable service to that institution. The same year that 
he was installed pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Whites- 
boro, he married Harriet L. Gold, the oldest daughter of Hon. 
Thomas R. Gold, a woman of excellent qualities of head and 
heart, and among the most cultured of her sex. She survived her 
husband, and died at her home in Whitesboro, August 5, 1873, at 
the advanced age of eighty-three years. Rev. Mr. Frost left him 
surviving four children. Sarah Gold Frost became the wife of 
Rev. Andrew Hull, D. D., of Elmira, where she died in December, 
1861. Mary A., another daughter, became the wife of William 
Burt, of Chicago; she died in Whitesboro, in June, 1863, and her 
remains are by the side of her parents. Thomas Gold Frost, the 
only son, attended the "Manual Labor School," graduated in 1842 
from Hamilton College, read law in Rome with Stryker & 
Comstock, became a law partner of H. T. Utley, now of Water- 
ville, and later with J. Thomas Spriggs. About 1858 Mr. Frost 
removed to Galesburg, in Illinois, and subsequently to Chicago, 
where he was a leading lawyer, and where he died in December, 
1880, universally regretted. Miss Harriet L. Gold Frost is the 
only survivor of the family ; she is yet a resident of the village 
where her grandfather settled ninety years ago, and is an 
occupant of the homestead, which he erected for her parents more 
than sixty years since. 

The Manns and Caprons. 

Inasmuch as considerable has been said concerning the pioneer 
lawyers, physicians and divines of Whitesboro, it is meet and 
proper that something should appear regarding another class of 
early residents, who by their industry and enterprise contributed 
as much as any to give to that villiage its " Golden Age." I 
refer to those connected with the manufacturing interests and 
who started the first cotton factories in this State. 

On Christmas day, 1778, when this country was in the midst of 
her Revolutionary troubles, the American privateer brig General 
Arnold, with one hundred and twenty men on board, hoisted sail 
in Boston harbor and put out to sea. Hardly was that vessel out 
of port before it was overtaken by one of the most tremendous 
snow storms within the memory of any then living. The next day 
it parted its cable ofl* Plymouth harbor, became unmanageable, 
men froze to the masts and rigging, the captain, surgeon of the 
vessel and one hundred of* the men perished by the cold, and sixty- 



THE MANNS. 121 

six of them were buried in one grave. An inscription upon a 
family monument in the burying gixnmd at Oldtown, Mass., 
records the above facts and concludes with these words : "And 
now Lord God Almighty, just and true are all Thy ways, but who 
can stand before Thy cold ? " That monument is to the memory 
of the surgeon lost on that vessel. His name was Dr. Herbert 
Mann, of a family noted for the many eminent physicians which 
successive generations have produced. His father was also a 
doctor, of Attleboro, Mass., a noted physician and an active 
participator with the Colonists in their struggles for independence. 
That father (Dr. Bezaleel Mann) died in 1796 at the age of 
seventy-four years. That surgeon had three brothers, two of 
whom, like himself, had graduated at Brown University, and were 
noted physicians, one of them settling at Newport and the other 
at Hudson in this State. The other brother was Newton Mann, 
a merchant and a business man, who came to Whitesboro. Dr. 
J. Milton Mann, who located at Hudson, was drowned one night 
while crossing the river to visit a patient; he left a widow, one 
son and four daughters. In 1808 that widow and .her children, 
also Newton Mann, and Dr. Seth Capron (who had married into 
the Mann family) came to Whitesboro to live. ! Newton Mann 
located on the corner of Main and Westmoreland streets, where 
Hon. Philo White now resides; the widow Mann and family lived 
in the house next westerly, where a sou (H. B. Mann, of Newton,) 
subsequently lived, and which afterwards for forty years or more 
was the residence of Rev. Beriah Green. Dr. Capron lived on the 
other side of Main street, nearly opposite the residence of Newton 
Mann. These three families were connected by marriage or 
related to each other, and were valuable acquisitions to the society 
of Whitesboro, while the men were among the most prominent 
and enterprising business men in this section. About that time 
President Dwight, of Yale, made a tour through this section, and 
made this entry in his ''travels:" " Of the pretty little village 
of Whitesborough, the houses are about sixty in number, and for 
a new settlement are uncommonly good; they stand on a single 
street, straight, smooth and beautiful. It contains two churches 
and several genteel families, who are eminently hospitable and 
furnish each other with the pleasures of a polished society." As 
before stated, Newton Maun was a merchant, and for a while a 
partner of B. S. Walcott ; he was also largely interested in the 
promotion of cotton manufacture and other industries of the 
country. About 1825, he followed his son to what is now 



122 WHITESBOEO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

Mannsville, in Jefferson comity, but he did not engage in business 
after he left Whitesboro. He died in Mannsville, April 11, 1860, 
at the age of ninety years ; his wife died six months later, 
November 17, 1860, at the age of ninety-four. That couple had 
lived a married life of sixty-eight years, and were not long 
separated by death. They had one son and two daughters. The 
son, H. B, Mann, was an enterprising business citizen and manu- 
facturer; his wife was Julia Doolitlle, a daughter of a pioneer 
settler of Whitesboro. About 1824, he moved to what is now 
Mannsville, after whom that place is named, became a partner of 
and half owner with his brother-in-law Daniel Ward well, in a 
cotton factory of six hundred spindles, which the latter had 
erected there in that year. In 1827, the factory burned to the 
ground, entailing a loss of $10,000 upon the owners, and soon 
thereafter H. B. Mann returned to Whitesboro and died there 
January 8, 1830, at the early age of thirty-eight years. His 
widow died at the residence of her son Dr. J. P. Mann, of New 
York city, July 18, 1872, at the venerable age of eighty years,, 
and the remains of husband and wife are side by side in the 
cemetery at Whitesboro. Hetty, one of the daughters of Newton 
Mann, became the wife of Judge Daniel Wardwell, who read law 
with Gold & Sill, lived in Utica, Home, Pulaski and Mannsville, 
and was one of the judges of the Jeffersou Common Pleas, Mem- 
ber of Congress from the latter county for four terms, and in 
Congress a devoted friend of President Jackson all through the 
most stormy times of the latter's Administration. Mrs. Ward- 
well died in 1858, and her memory is cherished by all who knew 
her, as one of the best and most lovable of women. Abby Mann, 
the other daughter, became the wife of Dr. Roswell Kinney, a 
leading physician of Mannsville, and oue of its most worthy 
citizens. He was brother-in-law of Rev. G. W. Gale, who started 
the Oneida Institute at Whitesboro. Mrs. Dr. Kinney outlived 
her husband, and died in March 1881, at the age of eighty years, 
revered, respected and loved by a large circle of friends. A 
stately, appropriate monument in the Mannsville cemetery marks 
the resting places of the three families of the Wardwell's, Mann's 
and Kinney's. 

Of the family of Dr. J. Milton Mann, who came from Hudson 
to Whitesboro, as before stated, the eldest daughter, Eliza, mar- 
ried in 1810, Theodore Sill, as before mentioned. She died April 
29, 1849. She was the mother of Mrs. Calvert Comstock. Eloisa, 
another daughter, became the wife of John B. Rumney, formerly 



THE C APRONS. 123 

of England, but who resided, I believe, prior to 1848, in the 
western part of the State, aud subsequently moved South; she 
died quite suddenly at or near Alexandria, Va., in October, 1849. 
Sarah J., another daughter, became the wife of Thomas D. Bur- 
rail, of Geneva, prominently connected with the invention, manu- 
facture or sale of agricultural implements; she died in April, 1831. 
Mary E., the only unmarried daughter of that family, will be 
remembered even by later residents of Whitesboro, as a very in- 
telligent and cultivated lady ; she died in Rome about fifteen 
years ago. John B. Mann, the only son, died in Rome at the 
residence of his sister, Mrs. Sill, in the winter of 1848-9. 

Dr. Seth Capron, although the last mentioned of those three 
families, was not by any means, the least in importance ; on the 
contrary, he may be justly ranked among the first of the leading 
men of Whitesboro, or in Central New York. He was forty-five 
years of age when he moved to Whitesboro, was a man of family, 
and stood high in the medical profession. He had seen much 
service in the war of the Revolution, was at the siege of New- 
port, attached to the staff of LaFayette, where he came near losing 
his life by a cannon ball which grazed his head, that was aimed at 
the life of his General. He was at the battle of White Plains, and 
during the rest of the war, after that battle, was under Wash- 
ington. It was not until the return of peace that he commenced 
his medical studies. He then entered the office of Dr. Bezaleel 
Mann, whose second daughter he subsequently married. He came 
to Whitesboro as before mentioned, and in a year or two after- 
ward gave so much attention to manufactures and other pursuits 
that he can hardly be said, after his removal to this county, to 
have been a practicing physician. He was originator of the 
scheme, and with the co-operation of B. S. Walcott, Newton 
Mann, Theodore Sill, Thomas R. Gold, and a few others started on 
Sauquoit Creek the first works for the manufacture of cotton 
erected in this State. Dr. Capron had the main charge, and large 
numbers of merino sheep were imported from Spain at a heavy 
expense, some costing as high as $600 and $1,000 each. There 
were large fields of them kept across the river, and one of the 
farms was called "Mount Merino." Dr. Capron was small in 
stature, but he made up by his great physical and mental activity 
and large business capacity and ability. He never seemed more 
happy than when engaged in the most extensive enterprises that 
called into requisition all of his energies and the powers of his 
mind. He was as active in the peaceful pursuits of life as he had 



124 

been in the stirring times of the Revolution. For a dozen years 
or so he was thus engaged at Whitesboro, but at last financial 
embarrassments overtook him, and he lost his property. He then 
removed to Oriskany, took charge of the woolen mills there, but 
in 1825 he left the county and located at Walden, in Orange 
county, and there established far more extensive factories than he 
was able to do in this county. Ten years later, after an illness of 
but one day, he died at the age of seventy-four years. He had 
four sons. John, Newton, Seth and Horace. Dr. Seth Capron, Jr., 
was a physician, and Horace, the well-known General Horace 
Capron.* The success which attended and the grand results which 
followed the establishment of those cotton works at Whitestown 
are of themselves sufficient to embalm the memory of their 
founders in the hearts of their countrymen. That class of men 
gave to Whitesboro its golden age. Dr. Ba'gg has rendered a 
most valuable service to the whole country by the exhaustive 
paper read by him before the Oneida Historical Society in July, 
1879, relative to that branch of Oneida county's industries. 

S. Newton Dexter. 

In the year 1815 there located in Whitesboro a married man of 
thirty years of age, of great industry and force of character, and 
who subsequently demonstrated his ability and capacity to under- 
take and carry forward more extensive, and a greater variety of 
business enterprises, than any other man who ever lived in that 
village. S. Newton Dexter was to Whitestown, as well as to 
every other locality where his active mind and enterprising spirit 
found work to do, the life and soul of thriving manufacturing 
industries, and an active and prominent participator in everything 
that tended to promote the prosperity of a place, or the culture 
and education of its people. He was a fit successor to the Manns 
and Caprons, to carry on the great enterprises they had in- 
augurated. The great-grandfather of Mr. Dexter was a graduate 
of Harvard College, and for many years pastor of a Congrega- 
tional Church in Massachusetts. His grandfather, before the war 
of the Revolution, was an eminent importing merchant of Boston, 
and at his death bequeathed a handsome endowment to Harvard, 
the income of which went to the Professor of Biblical Litera- 
ture. His father was the first manufacturer of cotton goods iu 

*Gen. Capron Ex-U. S. Commissioner of Agriculture, died at his home. in Wash- 
ing-ton, on the night of February 22, 1885, from a cold taken at the dedicatory 
ceremonies at the Washington Monument, the previous day, at the age of 73 years. 



S. NEWTON DEXTER. 125 

the United States, and an enterprising business man. With such 
an ancestry, and such noble examples and worthy incentives 
before him, it would be quite natural to expect something worthy 
and of like character from the descendant. S. Newton Dexter 
was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1785, and in due time 
entered Brown University, where his elder brother had graduated 
in 1801 ; but the activity of his mind and his restless desire for a 
more busy and active life, led him to leave school before he had 
graduated, and engage in business in Boston. In 1815 he removed 
to Whitesboro, where he resided, with temporary exceptions, for 
forty-seven years of his life. He engaged at first in a mercantile 
pursuit, his store being on the corner of Maine and Mohawk 
streets. That was on the eve of the construction of the Erie 
«anal, and Mr. Dexter's large business capacity soon led him into 
other pursuits, and into much larger and more diversified fields of 
labor. In 1817 he had a large contract for the construction of a 
section of the canal which led through what is now the city of 
Syracuse, but then a swamp. In 1824, he undertook a heavy 
contract on the Delaware and Chesapeake Canal, which occupied 
five years of his time and which involved an expenditure of over 
$2,000,000. That work was completed to the entire satisfaction 
of the directors, as evidenced by their complimentary resolutions 
on Mr. Dexter and his work. He was a stockholder in the 
Oriskany woolen factory, a company formed four years before he 
moved to Whitesboro, with a capital of $200,000, and having 
among its original stockholders Chief Justice Ambrose Spencer, 
Jonas Piatt, William G. Tracy, Newton Mann, Thomas R. Gold, 
Theodore Sill and DeWitt Clinton. Mr. Dexter, subsequent to his 
canal contracts, took charge as agent of those woolen mills, and 
by his executive ability, and the use of his own funds, restored 
the credit of the company and brought back to it business and 
public confidence, at a time when it was on the verge of bank- 
ruptcy. Through his agency the Dexter Manufacturing Company 
was organized in 1832, with a capital of $ 100,000, and its location 
fixed at Pleasant Valley, a short distance from Oriskany, where 
it flourished and thrived during the rest of Mr. Dexter's life. 
About the same time that company was formed, Mr. Dexter 
became largely interested in other manufacturing enterprises in 
Elgin, 111., and also in Jefferson county in this State. The little 
village in the town of Brownsville in the last named county, at the 
head of Black River Bay, and which had theretofore borne the 
name of "Fish Island," was made in 1837, by the means and 



126 WHITESBORo's GOLDEN AGE. 

influence of Mr. Dexter, the seat of large manufacturing 
establishments. One thousand acres of land were purchased and 
laid out into village lots, the village in compliment to its founder 
was named "Dexter," and now contains some six hundred 
inhabitants. In 1829, Mr. Dexter was elected one of the first 
trustees, and the first president of the village of Whitestown. 
He was the first president of the Bank of Whitestown, and held 
that position from 1838 to 1853. In 1840 he was appointed Canal 
Commissioner by Governor Seward, and in 1850 was appointed by 
Governor Hamilton Fish one of the managers of the State Lunatic 
Asylum at Utica, which position he held uutil his death. There 
were many other pioneer and business enterprises in which he was 
engaged, the ultimate success of which demonstrated his foresight, 
far-reaching sagacity and business ability. In the midst of all 
these varied duties, and the multiplicity of his cares and labors, 
he was not neglectful of works of art nor of the causes of educa- 
tion and religion. His library was well stored with works of a 
standard character, and his mind with useful knowledge. His 
conversational powers were great, his information varied and 
extensive, and his manners easy, social and polite. Hamilton 
College numbered no stronger friend or benefactor among its list 
of supporters than Mr. Dexter, his benefactions to that institution 
aggregating some $23,000. The first wife of Mr. Dexter was 
Laura Northrup, of Athens, in this State; they were married four 
years before his removal to Whitesboro; she died in 1846. His 
second wife was the widow of Thomas R. Gold, Jr., she outlived 
him, and is yet a resident of Whitesboro. Mr. Dexter died 
November 18, 1862, at the age of seventy-seven years, and an 
appropriate monument in the Whitesboro cemetery marks his 
resting place. Mr. Dexter left two children ; Andrew, the son, 
was with his father in the manufacturing enterprises, and lived at 
Whitesboro, and also at Utica. His wife was a daughter of 
Theodore S. Gold. I believe they now reside in New York city. 
The only daughter of S. Newton Dexter became the wife of Prof. 
North, of Hamilton College. She died in 1869, and the tender 
and touching address of Prof. Upson at her funeral bears witness 
to her high Christian character, and to those noble traits which 
she possessed as daughter, wife and mother, which make up the 
highest types of womanhood. 

Is it a wonder that Whitesboro had such a golden age, when 
such persons as I have enumerated contributed to and made part 
of its history ? 



LEWIS BERRY AND HIS FAMILY. 127 

Lewis Berby and His Family. 

In 1802, a man with a wife and several small children came from 
Washington county, in this State, and located at or near what is 
Lairdsville, in the town of Westmoreland, in this county, and 
there engaged in mercantile pursuits. That merchant was Lewis 
Berry. He was originally from New Jersey, where his father was 
one of the King's Justices of the Peace at the breaking out of 
the Revolution, hut who took sides with the Colonists. The first 
Berry who crossed the Atlantic for America was an escaped pris- 
oner from Sterling Castle, where he was confined under sentence of 
death, for the part he took in behalf of the house of Stuart in the 
bloody contest with Cromwell and the Parliamentary party. 
At the time Mr. Berry commenced his mercantile career in West- 
moreland, the county was new and sparsely populated, the people 
poor, trade limited, and business neither extensive nor prosperous. 
In a few years, by reason of overtrade or lack of patronage, Mr. 
Berry became embarrassed in his circumstances, judgments were 
obtained against him, his store of goods and his real estate were 
sold out by the sheriff, and as imprisonment for debt was then the 
law of the land, he was taken into custody and placed upon " the 
limits "at Whitesboro. That was about 1807. This misfortune 
was no disparagement to Mr. Berry's abilities or integrity, nor 
did it serve in the least to discredit or discourage him. He 
seemed to be not unmindful of the fact that they are the greatest 
and noblest who meet life's necessities with the bravest heart and 
the fewest murmurs, and who do to the best of their ability what- 
ever is given unto them to do. Out of this nettle of danger he 
plucked the flower of safety. He commenced keeping "tavern" 
in the old tavern stand of Daniel C. White, opposite the village 
green, a little easterly of the residence of Mrs. W. L. Wetmom 
and where the first town meeting of Whitestown was held 
in l'ZSO. At the time of Mr. Berry's compulsory removal to 
Whitesboro, that village had become an important and prom- 
inent locality. It was one of the county seats, and was the abode 
of some of the most influential men in this part of the State. It 
was a good location for a well regulated and a weli kept " tavern" 
as hotels were styled in those days, and the place where judges, 
lawyers and the best class would congregate when courts were held 
in that villiage, and where travelers would stop on their way 
through the central part of the State. It was just such a stop- 
ping place as was then greatly needed, and Mr. Berry took in the 



128 • WHITESBOKO's GOLDEN .AGE. 

situation at a glance, and set to work to supply the pressing need. 
No one now living can remember how Mr. Berry kept that house, 
although the oldest inhabitants just remember that he did keep it 
for awhile; but there are many yet alive, who well remember, and 
have a pleasant recollection too, of the " tavern,' 1 or perhaps more 
properly speaking, of the boarding house Mr. Berry kept, on the 
site next to Judge Piatt's residence, for nearly or quite forty years 
of his life. As eai'ly as ] 795 Nathaniel Piatt kept a store on that 
site, and in 1802 Richard M. Harrison, a brother of Mrs. Dr. 
Elizur Moseley, was in trade there; not far from 1810 it was con- 
verted into a tavern stand, and Mr. Berry seems to have been the 
first occupant and the only one so long as he lived. There are yet 
so many among the living who remember Mr. Berry and his well 
kept house that it is pleasant to refer to them and to speak in un- 
qualified praise of both. It was a popular resort at the sessions of 
the court in Whitesboro and for travelers who would make a long 
day's journey to reach that road-side inn rather than to pass a 
night or take a meal at a less attractive place. It was widely and 
favorably known throughout the State, and was to Whitesboro 
what " Bagg's Tavern " and hotel years ago were to Utica, 
Congress Hall to Albany, and the Astor House to New York, 
where men of culture and of quiet habits loved to gather, because 
there they were sure to meet men of their own tastes, and to find 
a place of respectability and of home-like attractions. Mr. Berry, 
too, was a cultured and cultivated gentleman of genial and polite 
manners, social in his intercourse, and highly entertaining and 
instructive in conversation. He was a general favorite wherever 
known, and respected and liked by all his neighbors. It is handed 
down as one of the traditions of his times, that when he was 
placed upon " the limits," some thirt} r or forty of his farmer 
country neighbors made a "bee" and brought him in the winter 
as many loads of wood and piled it in his yard or woodshed, as 
sufficed for the year's use. This was repeated the next year and 
the next, and so on until it became one of the regular yearly 
customs of his country friends. Mr. Berry was too generous and 
kind hearted to let such occasions pass unnoticed, and so he made 
each one of these occasions a joyful and festive one by providing 
for the teams which drew the wood, and furnishing to all the 
persons who came a sumptuous dinner, a cordial welcome and a 
liberal entertainment. No doubt the expense to him of such 
entertainments was much beyond the value of the fuel that was 
brought; but he appreciated the feelings that prompted his friends 



LEWIS BERRY AND HIS FAMILY. 129 

to do these deeds of kindness — yes, to keep up the custom in 
remembrance and as a reminder of by-gone years, and he was too 
kind, genial and generous to wish for the discontinuance. He had 
that touch of human nature which made him feel the whole world 
was his kin, and that each living being was a member of one com- 
mon brotherhood. I am told by those who knew him best that to 
none was he more kind, attentive and sympathetic than to those 
young men of limited means, who, struggling with poverty and 
manfully battling with life, came to Whitesboro to attend school 
or to pursue their legal studies. Those he unobstrusely sought 
out, and invited and strongly urged to make his house their board- 
ing place, with full permission to pay him whenever they could, or 
not at all, if they were never able. Mr. Berry took great interest 
in politics, and was a Federalist while that party was in existence, 
and an equally ardent Whig in later years. Although he bore a 
most striking resemblance, it is said, to General Andrew Jackson, 
yet Mr. Berry was his bitter political opponent. Henry Clay was 
his beau ideal of a statesman, and it well nigh broke his heart 
when that gallant chieftain lost the Presidential race of 1844. He 
lived, however, and took part in another presidential contest four 
years later, but not with equal heart or ardor. Time was laying its 
heavy hand upon him, and although he had lost four children, all 
in infancy, yet it had been over twenty years since death had 
invaded his household. It came, however, in March, 1849, and 
this time took the head of the family. At the age of eighty-two 
years, Lewis Berry was called from earth, and his remains were 
laid away in the cemetery which overlooked the village where he 
had passed over forty years of his life. 

Three years later, another link of that family circle was missing 
in the person of the brightest, the most gifted and the most 
widely known of the children. Six months thereafter death came 
again, and this time took the youngest-born of the family. The 
next year another of these children died, and in 1855 she who had 
been for over sixty years the wife of Lewis Berry, the mother of 
fifteen children, passed away at the age of eighty-two — the age of 
her husband when he died six years before. The next year two 
more daughters died, and thus, within the space of seven years, 
the village church bell of Whitesboro had tolled for seven 
funerals in that family. 

I have said there were fifteen children, four of whom died in 
infancy, and I think before Mr. Berry removed to Whitesboro. 
The oldest son was Wendell Berry, born in 1793, who was about 



130 WHITESBORO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

fourteen years old when his father located in Whitesboro. He 
attended Mr. Halsey's school, graduated in 1815 from Hamilton 
College, read law, was admitted to the bar, and about 1819 moved 
to and opened a law office in Mayville, Chautauqua county, where 
he died in 1828, at the age of thirty-five. Morris Miller Berry 
was the second son, and the fourth child. He also was a pupil of 
Mr. Halsey, but received from Rev. John Frost the finishing 
touches to his education, preparatory to entering Hamilton College, 
at which institution he graduated in 1817 at the age of eighteen. 
He read law with Nathan Williams, of Utica- was admitted to 
practice in October, 1820, and soon after opened a law office in 
Massena, St. Lawrence county ; but the law was not to his tastes 
or likings. He had much literary ability, was well read and well 
informed, could and did write fine pieces of poetry, both of a 
serious and humorous character, contributed able articles for the 
press and wrote essays and addresses of fine literary merit; but 
he was diffident and unassuming, and could not face a court, jury 
or audience, although he could write articles that would sensibly 
touch the reader or hearer, or set them in roars of laughter. 

After his admission to the bar, rather than practice law, he 
taught schools in the rural districts, boarded around among the 
patrons, as was and is customary in country districts; he also 
wrote considerably and very acceptably for newspapers and 
magazines. He was not long absent from Whitesboro, after his 
admission to the bar. During the " Washingtonian movement" 
and temperance revival of about 1 842 he wrote, at the request of 
Rev. Beriah Green, a temperance address, to be delivered in, an 
evening at Whitesboro. The evening came and so did a large 
audience; Mr. Berry arose and got as far as "Fellow Citizens," 
and there his tongue balked and refused to budge another inch or 
to utter another word ; he sat down and other speakers finished 
the meeting. Another evening was appointed for the address, and 
again a large audience and Mr. Berry were there. After great 
effort and much halting and hesitation he went through with his 
lecture, but he said it was the greatest struggle of his life ; and 
yet Mr. Green said that lecture, as to its style as a literary pro- 
duction, would have done no discredit to Addison, and for solid 
arguments and apt illustrations, was equal to the best made on 
that subject. He was Postmaster of Whitesboro during the 
administration of Harrison and Tyler, but was rotated out of 
office in 1845 by the administration of President Polk. From 
1846 to 1866 he was in the book trade at Saratoga, and for five 



THE LEWIS BERRY FAMILY. 131 

years afterwards was librarian at Divinity Hall in Philadelphia ; 
later he removed to Washington and died in that city in January, 
1881, at the age of eighty-two years — the same age that his father 
and mother were when they died. He left a widow but no 
children. At the time of his death he was, with one or two 
exceptions, the oldest alumnus of Hamilton College, and but a 
few who read the notice of his death were aware that he was once 
one of the early residents of Whitesboro, and among the 
brightest and best informed of those who gave to that place its 
golden age. His remains are in the cemetery at Saratoga. In 
1845 he married Miss Eugenia Borland, of Poughkeepsie, who yet 
survives him. 

Lewis F. Berry was another son ; he was a bookkeeper and 
always a resident of Whitestown. He was trustee of the village 
from 1836 to 1842; he died at Yorkville in January, 1369, at the 
age of sixty, leaving a widow now residing West, and three 
daughters. John was the youngest born of Lewis Berry's 
children, was a machinist and was never married ; he died in July, 
1852, at the age of thirty-two. There were seven daughters, 
four of whom never married; of this four, Jane H., died in 1810, 
at the age of sixteen years ; she is said to have been very 
beautiful; Wealthy Ann, died in September, 1853, at the age of 
fifty-five; Mary died in December, 1856; Cornelia in April, 1872, 
at the age of about sixty. Of the married daughters, Elizabeth 
was the fifth daughter, and the' first one married. Those who 
remember her in her beauty and prime, as she was fifty years ago, 
tell me -she was bright, fascinating, beautiful, cultivated and the 
belle of society. She was one of the thirteen white-robed maidens 
who joined in the procession that gave welcome to LaFayette 
when he visited Whitesboro in June, 1825. The introductions to 
citizens were on the grounds of Judge Piatt, the reception by the 
committee at the house of her father. She became the wife of 
Hon. O. L. Barbour, who read law with Wheeler Barnes, of 
Rome, and whom lawyers know as the author of the sixty-seven 
volumes of "Barbour's Supreme Court Reports," "Barbour's 
Chancery Practice," and "Magistrate's Criminal Law" — the last 
two works, the best of the kind to be found in a lawyer's library. 
She died at Saratoga in October, 1856, at the age of about fifty. 
Frances Miriam was eleventh child in the family. In early life 
she was peculiarly bright and gifted, and exhibited unusual 
talents as a writer of both prose and poetry, and in her pencil 
sketches and "offhand takings" of the foibles and peculiarities of 



132 WHITESBOKO's GOLDEN AGE. 

man and womankind. In these regards she was much like her 
brother Morris Miller, although he never attained the reputation 
or acquired the celebrity she worked out for herself. She was a 
favorite contributor to Godey's Lady^s Hook and NeaVs 
Saturday Gazette, and those periodicals were greatly sought for 
during the time her articles were running through their columns- 
Most of the " Widow Bedott Papers," of which she was the 
authoress, were written after her marriage in 1847, and were- 
dramatized after her death. Tradition has it that most of the 
humorous characters in these papers were taken from real life, 
and that two libel suits were commenced by different persons, 
each plaintiff claiming she was the woman referred to in the 
character of "Mrs. Sampson Savage." No one remembers that 
either of these libel suits culminated in a trial. Great as was 
Frances Miriam's talents in this vein of writing, yet it is said she 
shone to better advantage, and exhibited greater strength of 
mind and more poetic genius in articles of a serious kind- 
Fragmentary poems of hers, which from time to time appeared in 
print, were reckoned among the sweetest and best of any which 
were then being published. She is remembered as among the 
foremost of humorous writers of that kind of humor above 
mentioned, and I think I am safe in saying that Whitesboro, even 
in its golden days, has produced no more gifted or talented lady 
than she. In 184V she became the wife of Rev. B. W. Whitcher, 
now and for many years a resident of Whitesboro. She died 
January 4, 1852, at the age of forty-one. She has but one child, 
Mrs. W. S. Wood, of Muskegon, Michigan. Katherine Berry was 
the youngest of the daughters ; she, too, possessed much literary 
ability, and for many years was a valuable contributor to news- 
papers and magazines. In 1855 she became the wife of Colonel 
H. P. Potter, for many years a resident of Whitesboro, but now . 
a resident of Ballston Springs. She died in 1865 at the age of 
forty-eight years. None of the sons of Lewis Berry had a sou, 
and hence the family name is not perpetuated among his descend- 
ants ; nor are there any grandsous among his daughters except in 
the family of his daughter Elizabeth. 

The Curtenius Family. 

Whitesboro at an early day took great interest in maintaining 
good schools, and having as teachers therein those who were 
highly educated and ranked among the foremost in their pro- 
fession. This painstaking gave the society and the schools of 



THE CUETENIUS FAMILY. 133 

Whitesboro a good reputation abroad, and served to induce many 
to settle in that locality for the purpose of enjoying that society, 
and at the same time reaping for their children the benefit of 
those schools. In 1818 there came to Whitesboro to reside a 
widow with five children of her own, besides two of her late hus- 
band's by a former marriage. This lady was Mrs. Peter Curtenius. 
Her husband had been a wealthy merchant in New York city, was 
the owner of many thousands of acres of land in Oswego county, 
which as early as 1795 had been conveyed to him by the patentee, 
George Scriba ; he was also the owner of a large tract of land in 
Steuben township, in this county, and, in his day, was a wealthy 
and prominent merchant and citizen in New York. He was born 
in that city find always lived there. In 1804 he was Member of 
Assembly from New York, two years later was appointed by 
President Jefferson United States Marshall for the southern 
district of the State, held that office until 1811, when he was 
reappointed by President Madison, and continued until 1814. 
I learn that his first commission, bearing the autograph signature 
of President Jefferson, is now in the possession of his daughter at 
Whitesboro. Allow me to suggest by way of parenthesis, 
whether the Oneida Historical Society had not better make the 
effort to procure that document for a deposit among its archives? 
Mr. Curtenius died not far from 1817, and on the removal of the 
family in 1818 to Whitesboro, Mrs. Curtenius purchased the 
Arthur Breese mansion, which stood on the hill, near the cemetery, 
giving in exchange one thousand acres of the Oswego lands. 
That mansion had been the residence of Gideon Granger and 
family during their several years' residence in Whitesboro. As 
those seven children became educated, and matured, they 
scattered in various directions, and the sons engaged in different 
avocations. The two sons by the first marriage never married; 
the oldest one died in New York city in 1833, and the other one 
in Kalamazoo in 1866. The eldest son by the second marriage, 
was John ; after completing his education he read law with Storrs 
& White, was admitted to the bar, and in 1820 married Mary F., 
a daughter of Judge Young, founder of Youngstown, Ohio, and 
granddaughter of Judge Hugh White, the pioneer settler of 
Whitestown. He removed to Buffalo, practiced law there, but 
subsequently removed to Utica, where he died in 1871; he was 
father of Mrs. Edward S. Bray ton, of Utica. Alfred G. Cur- 
tenius, the next son, after his school days were over, engaged 
actively and extensively in business, married in 1842 Miss 



134 

Antoinette Tracy, of Utica, moved West and accumnlated a large 
fortune, and died in Peoria, Illinois, in 1857. Frederick W., was 
another son; he attended Hamilton College, read law and was 
admitted to practice and located in Kalamazoo, where he married 
in 1867, and is now engaged in the practice of his profession at 
the age of seventy-six years. Of the two daughters of Mrs. Cur- 
tenius, one married in 1824, William Walcott, uncle of William 
D. Walcott of New York Mills. She died in Utica in 1846. 
Helen M., the other daughter, was married in 1839 to William S. 
Wetmore, grandson of one of Whitesboro's pioneer settlers ; he 
was a lawyer, admitted to the bar about 1831, was County 
Superintendent of Schools about 1845, and died in 1846; his 
widow is yet a •r-esident of Whitesboro, and has been for almost 
sixty-four years. None of the children were born in Whitesboro, 
and none have died there, and Mrs. Wetmore and her brother, 
Frederick W. Curtenius, arc the only survivors of those seven 
children. To her clear, ready and active memory, I am indebted 
for many interesting facts concerning Whitesboro's early history. 

The Stryker Family. 

In 1819, there came to that village to locate, and to educate her 
children, another widow, with a family of sons and daughters. 
That family was the widow and children of Daniel P. Stryker, 
late of Orange, New Jersey. The schools of Whitesboro were an 
inducement for their coming, and another one was that the widow 
of Rev. Bethuel Dodd, then a resident of Whitesboro and child- 
less, was a sister of Mrs. Stryker. Daniel P. Stryker was a 
merchant in Orange, but always of feeble health and of con- 
sumptive tendencies; he took cold while crossing the water 
between Orange and New York, was ill but a short time, and 
died in 1815, leaving the above family, four of the children being 
sons, and the eldest of them but six years of age at the father's 
death. This family on its removal to Whitesboro moved into the 
house of Mrs. Dodd and the inmates constituted but one family. 
In 1823 the only daughter and one of these sons died in the same 
week of scarlet fever ; in 1831 another son died, leaving but two 
of that family of children. The eldest of those two sons, John 
Stryker, attended the school of Mr. Eawson, having for his school- 
mates Charles Tracy, Henry Piatt and F. W. Curtenius. He had 
in view mercantile pursuits, and was for a while' clerk in the store 
of William G. Tracy. At the suggestion of Thomas R. Gold he 
left Mr. Tracy's store and became student at law in that noted 



JOHN STRYKER. 135 

lawyer's office, and soon became confidential clerk and manager of 
his office and keeper of:' the law register. It was in October, 1827, 
while Mr. Stryker was absent in Vernon for a day to transact 
law business with Timothy Jenkins, that be learned on his 
way back that Mr. Gold, during Ids absence, had suddenly died. 
Mr. Stryker finished his legal studies in the office of Storrs & 
White, and in 1829 was admitted to the Oneida Common Pleas, 
before he was twenty-one years old. That same year he removed to 
Korae and formed a law partnership with Allanson Bennett, then 
and subsequently quite a prominent and well known lawyer in this 
county. Subsequently Mr. Stryker was law partner of ex-Judge 
Foster, of Charles Tracy, Calvert Comstock and B. J. Beach. 
He never appeared much in courts as an advocate, or in the argu- 
ment of causes, yet he was a good practitioner and always 
controlled a large share of lucrative business. At an early age 
he had a great liking for politics, and at once embarked in its 
successful manipulations, its mysteries and uncertainties, and be- 
came one of the chief and leading actors and prominent factors in 
the democratic party. At the early age of twenty-three (in 1832) he 
was delegated at a meeting of citizens of Rome to go to Albany to 
aid in the procurement of the passage of a law chartering the " Bank 
of Rome;" he was eminently successful, and while there made the 
acquaintance and life-long friendship and respect of such magnates 
in the democratic party as William L. Marcy, Silas Wright, 
Edwin Croswell, Samuel Young and A. C. Flagg. In 1835 he 
was elected to the Assembly, the particular object and occasion of 
his going, being to secure the passage of a charter for the Syracuse 
and Utica Railroad Company, and to see that its location should 
be via Rome. In 1837 he was appointed Surrogate of the county 
and he held that office for ten years, and until the Constitution of 
1846 made the office elective. No man in the country has been 
more active in politics, or has attended more State and National 
conventions, or had a greater influence than he in the management 
of and in shaping the policy and politics of his party, during the 
forty years and more that he was a prominent participator; and it 
is doubtful if there were any in the ranks whose shrewdness and 
tact were more generally acknowledged and followed. He has 
been prominently connected with railroad and other public enter- 
prises, and I can well remember the time when a pass or a line 
from Hon. John Stryker would "dead head" a person over as many 
railroads and steamboat lines as one now would from Jay Gould or 
Wm. H. Vanderbilt. Mr. Stryker is seventy-three years of age, 



136 WHITESBORO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

yet his mind is as clear and as active, and his memory as retentive, 
as when in his prime. He can remember events and occurrences 
of fifty and sixty years ago, even to the minutest details, telling 
who were the leading delegates at a district, county, State or 
National convention, what the issne was, and how the vote stood, 
and the sides the prominent actors took, and what turned the 
scale, with as much particularity and exactness, as if the events 
were of yesterday. And to day he takes the same lively interest 
as of yore in all that concerns politics and parties, and the welfare 
and best interest of the Government and his country, and is as 
well posted, as when he was an active participator in its affairs. 
The wife of Mr. Stryker is a daughter of Hen. Thomas H. 
Hubbard, late of Utica, a prominent citizen and able lawyer in 
his day, and who was the first Surrogate (in 1806) of Madison 
county, and from 1816 to 1818 Deputy Attorney General of the 
district, then composed of the counties of Oneida, Otsego, Che- 
nango, Herkimer and Lewis: and from 1818 to 1821 District 
Attorney of Madison county, and member of Congress from that 
county six years, and presidential elector in 1812, 1844 and 1852. 
Rev. Isaac P. Stryker was the youngest of that family of five 
children. He attended the "Oneida Institute" in 1834, graduated 
from Auburn Theological Seminary, and about 1840 entered the 
ministry. He was pastor of the Presbyterian Churches at 
Urbana, Watkins and in other places, and for some thirty years 
was actively and usefully engaged in the duties of his sacred 
calling. Rev. Mr. Stryker has retired from the active duties of the 
ministry, and is now leading a life of quiet retirement in the 
village where his widowed mother and her five orphan children 
located over sixty years ago. That mother died at the residence 
of her son, Hon. John Stryker, in Rome, about 1832. The first 
wife of Rev. Mr. Stryker was a daughter of Commodore Woolsey. 

Gideon and Francis Granger. 

Among the many notable persons who were residents of 
Whitesboro prior to 1820, was Gideon Granger. He was from 
Connecticut, and was a leading and prominent lawyer there. He 
was elected in 1793 member of the Legislature in that State, and 
was several times re-elected, and to his exertions is that State prin- 
cipally indebted for its school fame. In 1801 he w T as appointed by 
President Jefferson, Postmaster General, and continued for eight 
years, and was reappointed to the same position in 1808, when 
President Madison assumed the duties of the presidential office, 



GIDEON AND FRANCIS GRANGER. 137 

and continued until 1814, when he resigned. About that time he 
moved to Whitesboro and occupied the dwelling known as the 
"Breese Mansion." His son, Francis Granger, had graduated a 
few years before from Yale College, and on the removal of 
the family to Whitesboro, the son became a student at law in the 
office of Gold & Sill. Not far from 1818, the Granger family 
moved to Canandaigua, and in 1819 the father was elected to the 
State Senate, but on account of ill health resigned in 1821. He 
died on the last day of the year 1822 at the age of fifty-five. He 
was an able speaker and a powerful writer, and a great friend of 
internal improvements. He gave 1,000 acres of land in aid of the 
Erie canal. Francis Granger was elected to the Assembly from 
Ontario county as a Clintonian in 1825, 1826, 182? and 1829. The 
first time he was elected, he was the candidate of his party for 
Speaker of the Assembly, but was defeated by Gen. Erastus Root. 
In 1828, at a convention of the "Adams Party," held at Utica, he 
was nominated for Lieutenant Governor and Smith Thompson 
for Governor; a little later he was nominated for Governor 
by the anti-Masons, but he declined that nomination and ran 
for Lieutenant Governor on the Adams ticket, but was defeated 
by Enos T. Throop. It was the same year Martin Van Buren was 
elected Governor. In 1830 Mr. Granger, at the anti-Masonic 
convention, held at Utica, was nominated for Governor and again 
defeated by Mr. Throop, the opposing nominee. In 1 832 Mr. 
Granger was a third time nominated for Governor, this last time 
by the anti-Masons, at a convention held in Utica, and this time 
he was defeated by William L. Marcy. In 1834 and again in 1836 
and 1838 he was elected to Congress, but resigned in 1841 to 
accept the same office at the hands of President Harrison, which 
his father, just forty years before, had accepted from President 
Jefferson. He died in Canandaigua in 1868, at the age of seventy 
six years. 

Finale — Summary. 

I have thus briefly sketched most of the more noted families 
who located in Whitesboro prior to 1820. This has been essential 
to show the prominence that village occupied and the part its 
citizens took in the affairs of county, State and Nation, and which 
gave to the place its golden age. A summary or brief recapitula- 
tion of its leading men, and the offices they monopolized while 
residents of that little hamlet, will indicate their character, posi- 
tion and influence, as well as the importance of the village. 



138 WHITESBORO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

General George Doolittle was the first Brigadier General of the 
county. Hugh White, County Judge for thirteen consecutive 
years, from 1791 to 1804. Jonas Piatt, County Clerk from 1791 
to 1802 — during that time Member of Assembly and Member of 
Congress — State Senator from 1809 to 1813, nominee for Governor 
in 1809, and Supreme Court Judge from 1814 to 1823. Elizur 
Moseley, Sheriff in 1799. Thomas R. Gold, State Senator from 

1796 to 1803, in the Assembly in 1808, District Attorney from 

1797 to 1801, in Congress from 1809 to 1813, and from 1815 to 
1817. William Kirkpatrick, in Congress from 1807 to 1809. 
Arthur Breeze, in the Assembly in 1797, Surrogate for ten years, 
from 1798 to 1808. Abram Camp, County Clerk from 1813 to 
1815, in the Assembly in 1810 and 1817. John B. Pease, Sheriff 
from 1819 to 1821. William G. Tracy, County Treasurer for 
twenty years, from 1810 to 1812, and again from 1813 to his death 
in 1830. Theodore Sill, County Treasurer from 1802 to 1810, 
Member of Assembly in 1813, 1814 and in 1826, and Brigadier 
General. Henry R. Storrs in Congress for twelve years, County 
Judge from 1825 to 1830; Fortune C. White, Assemblyman in 
1829 and in 1839, County Judge from 1840 to 1845, and Brigadier 
General of State Militia. . S. Newton Dexter three years Canal 
Commissioner. Can any other locality in the State or Nation 
make such a showing ? 

There are other persons, doubtless, who resided in Whitesboro 
prior to 1820, who attained distinction in other localities, and I 
should be much pleased to pursue the narrative, so as to include not 
only those omitted, but that other bright array, who came later, and 
were prominent actors in that little village. But I leave that 
pleasurable task to others. 

Next June it will be ninety-nine years since Hugh White planted 
his little colony upon the banks of Sadaqueda Creek, and doubt- 
less, in 1884, its Centennial will be observed in a manner becoming 
its importance, and worthy of the occasion and the grand results 
which have been produced. No other similar event in history has 
worked out a grander problem in its effect upon the growth, 
prosperity and civilization of the country. Those pioneers who 
thereafter followed the first settler were of a high order of talent, 
of character and culture ; they came, not for speculation, but 
rather to better, in an honorable way, their own fortunes, and to 
settle, develop and improve the country. They made a decided 
impress upon the age in which they lived, and did their full share in 
the education, civilization and Christianizing of the human race. 



FIRST CENSUS OF WHITESTOWJST. 139 

The good which they have done lives after them, and is remem- 
bered with respect and reverence by a grateful people. These 
reminiscences of the past, these brief and unsatisfactory sketches 
of by gone years, are but faint and feeble reminders of the excel- 
lent and sterner virtues of a pioneer life — glimpses of the thrift, 
enterprise, genius and culture of those who gave to Whitesboro 
its golden age. 



APPENDIX: 
The First Census of Whitestown, ix 1790. 

Hon. D. Willers, Jr., of Fayette, Seneca county, who was 
Secretary of State in 1874 and 1875, has been for some time 
engaged in gathering materials for a history of his own county, 
connected with its early history. For the purposes of the con- 
templated publication, Mr. Willers procured from the interior 
department at Washington a copy of the first census of the town 
of Whitestown, made by the United States authorities in 1790, 
showing the names of the heads of families in the town, the num- 
ber in each family and other particulars. The law for that census 
was passed by Congress March 1, 1790, and provided that the 
enumeration of the inhabitants should commence on the first 
Monday of August, 1790, and close within nine months thereafter. 
At that time the town of Whitestown extended as far west as 
Ontario county. 

It is not likely duplicate census returns were made in those 
days, and in all probability the one on file in the department, is 
the only one extant. Mr. Willers has kindly forwarded the copy 
procured by him, for the purpose of having the same placed in 
the rooms of the Oneida Historical Society, for preservation and 
future reference. The list commences with the name of Jedediah 
Sanger. The names thus enumerated are not arranged alpha- 
betically, nor is there any indication as to who resided at " Old 
Fort Schuyler" (now Utica,) Fort .Stan wix (now Rome,) New 
Hartford, Kirkland, Paris, Whitesboro and Westmoreland — those 
being the localities where about all of the inhabitants of what was 
then the town of Whitestown, then resided. A fire in the patent 
office in 1877 injured some of the records, and a few of the given 
names on this census list are disfigured, and mostly obliterated, as 
appears below. 



140 WHITESBORO'S GOLDEN AGE. 

I have arranged the names in alphabetical order, and (as far as I 
have been able to ascertain from history, records and ancient 
documents) have indicated where most of the persons were located 
in 1790, as regards the towns, mostly in this county,* as at present 
organized. 

The orthography of the names as appears on the census returns, 
has been copied, and the correct spelling given in brackets. This 
census pretty clearly shows who were residents of Whitestown 
at that early period, although there is evidence there were other 
residents of Whitestown in 1790 not included in it. For instance: 
Jones' Annals of Oneida County records that in 1789 the families 
of Ezra Parker, Ephraim Waldo and Nathan Waldo located in 
what is now the town of Bridgewater; that in March, 1790, the 
families of John Butler, Sylvester Butler and Asa Shepard 
settled at or near Sauquoit; that in March and April, 1789, the 
families of Benjamin Barnes, Jr., John Humaston, Aaron Simmons, 
Adam Simmons and Abel Simmons located' on Paris Hill. Clark's 
history of Onondaga county records that Ephraim Webster was 
located near the mouth of Onondaga creek in 1786; and Jones' 
Annals that said Webster located at Oriskany about 1784, and in 
1786 removed to Onondaga. It is also recorded in the history of 
Onondaga county that in 1788 Asa Danforth and Asa Danforth, Jr., 
and Comfort Tyler located at Onondaga valley. 

It is quite likely that most of the persons whose precise location 
is not given, resided in what is now Onondaga county. 

Jacob Morris was the census enumerator. The footings are as 
follows : 

Number of free white males of 16 years and upwards, 689 

Number of free white males under 16, 443 

Number of free white females, 749 

Number of slaves, 3 

Number not included in above, 7 

Total population, 1,891 

d. e. w. 



*Dr. Bag-gaud others have since located about forty names in addition, which 
are here included. 



FIRST CENSUS OF WHITESTOWN. 



141 



Names of Male Heaps of Families. 



BRIDGEWATER. 

Farewell, Joseph 

deerfield. 
Dame wood [Damotk], Richard 
Fanning, William 
Shearman, James 

KIRKLAND. 

Bullen, David 
Bullen, John 
Blodgett, Rufus 
Blodgett, Elijah 
Blodgett, Ludim 
Blanchard, Andrew 
Butler, Ebenezer 
Butler, Ebenezer, Jr. 
Butler, Salmon 
Bristol, Eli 
Bristol, Joel 
Carpenter, William 
Cassady [Cassety], Thomas 
Curtis, Jesse 
Catlin, Jessie 
Cook, William 
Eastman, Peter 
Ellenwood, Hannaniah 
Foot, Moses 
Foot, Luther 
Foot, Ira 
Foot, Bronson 
Ferguson, Samuel 
Ferguson, Samuel, Sr. 
Fancher, Thomas 
Gridley, Abraham 
Gridley, Jobs 
Hubbard, Thomas 
Hovey, Solomon 
Kirkland, Samuel 
Kellogg, Amos 
Marsh, John 
Marsh, Samuel 
Marsh, Asa 
Munroe, Theodore 
Markham, Stephen 
Merrell, Caleb B. 
Pond, Timothy 
Pond, Barnabas 
Stebbens, Judah 
Stebbens, Judah, Jr. 



Tuttle, Timothy 
Willard, Lewis 
Willard, Rufus 

NEW HARTFORD. 

Blair, Joel 
Bushnell, Stephen 
Blodgett, Solomon 
Beach, Ashbel 
Cook, Trueworthy 
Collins, Oliver 
Gaylord, Jotham 
Gurney, Bezelial 
Hale, Memon 
Haminway, Isaac 
Higby, Joseph 
Ives, Amos 
Jennings, Joseph 
Jewett, Samuel 
Kellogg, Jesse 
Kellogg, Jacob 
Kellogg, Frederick W. 
Kellogg, Freeman 
Kellogg, Aaron 
Kellogg, Solomon 
Kellogg, Stephen 
Miller. Amoch 
Olmstead, Ashbel 
Olmstead, Gamaliel 
Risley, Allen 
Risley, Elijah 
Savage, Guideon [Gideon] 
Staples, George 
Sanger, Jedediah 
Seward, Nathan 
Wells, Samuel 
Williams, Thomas 
Williams, Ezekiel 

PARIS. 

Coolage, Charles 
Barnes, Benjamin 
Barrett, Stephen 
Barrett, Benjamin 
Barrett, Isaac 
Davis, Elijah 
Fowler, Reuben 
Griffin, Kirkland 
Hopkins, Elias 
Kellogg, Phineas 



142 



WHITESBORo's GOLDEN AGE. 



Lumnias, [Loomis] Ladoc 
Plumb, Joseph 
Porter, Raphel 
Rice, [Royce] Amaziah 
Rice, Hezekiah 
Rice, William 
Shearman, Levy 
Thompson, Alpheus 

HOME. 
Andrus, David 
Colbreath. William 
Demont, Joseph 
French, Jasper 
Fellows, Roswell [Rozel] 
Gilbert, Nathaniel 
Knight, Daniel W. 
Phelps, Jedediah 
Perkins, Silas 
Robbins, Ephraim 
Ranney, **eth [Seth] 
Ranny, ** illett [Willett] 
Ranny, James 
Smith, Bill 

Wright, **er [Ebenezer] 
Wright, **as [Thomas] 

STEUBEN. 
Sizer, Samuel 

TJTICA. 

Alberson [Alverson], Uriah 

Bellinger, John 

Brown, Daniel 

Christman, Jacob 

Clark, Aaron 

Harris, Joseph 

Morey, Solomon 

Morey, Sylvanus 

Nutting, Simeon 

Post, John 

Potter, Stephen 

Parker, Jason 

Rust, Samuel 

Sailes, Darius 

Saule, Joseph 

Smith, Peter 

Smith, Nathan 

Smith, James 

Wells, Arnold 

VERNON. 

Brownson, Solomon 



WESTERN. 
Beckwith, Asa 
Beckwith, Reuben 
Wager, Henry 

WESTMOREL AN D. 

Blackmer, Ephraim 
Blackmer, Joseph 
Blackmer, Joseph, Jr. 
Brigham, Stephen 
Brigham, Lyman 
Blair, John 
Collins, Samuel 
Cone, Walter 
Chittington, Gerard 

[Chittenden, Jared] 
Dean, James 
Dean, Jonathan 
Dean, William 
Gleason, Solomon 
Gleason, Joseph 
Griffin, Natheeneil 
Jones, Nehemiah 
Jones, Joseph 
Laird, Samuel 
Laird, John 

Lummas [Loomis], Nathan 
Lumnias [Loomis], Isaac 
Pa,rkman, Alexander 
Phelps, Silas 
Phelps, Jacob 
Phelps, Joseph 
Rogers, Simeon 
Smith, Amos 
Smith, Elijah 
Stillman, Samuel 
Stillman, John, 
Townsend, Nathaniel 
Townsend, John 

WHITESTOWN. 
Badcock, [Babcock] David 
Barnard, Moses 
Brainard, Jeptha 
Beardsley, John 
Doolittle, George 
Ensign, Samuel 
Ferguson, James 
Goodrich, Rosel [Roswell] 
Holt, Justice [Isaac] 
Kane, Elisha 



FIRST CENSUS OF WHITESTOWN. 



143 



Leavenworth, Lemuel 

Maynard, Needham 

Pool. Simeon 

Root, Joseph, Sr. 

Steel, Seth 

Seymour, Uriah 

Towny, John 

Whitmore, [Wetmore] Amos 

Whitmore, [Wetmore] Parsons 

Wilcox, Ozias 

White, Hugh 

White, Hugh, Jr. 

White, Daniel C. 

White, Ansel 

White, Joseph 

White, Philo 

Wilson, John 

Winch, Samuel 

LITCHFIELD, HERE. CO. 

Angier, John 

NORWICH, HERK. CO. 

Fowell, [Farwell, Dr.,] Isaac 

PERSONS WHOSE PRECISE LOCALITIES 
ARE UNKNOWN. 

Arnold, Hopkins 

Allen, Gideon 

Allen, John 

Allen, Jeremiah 

Ames, Robert 

Austin, Nathaniel 

Allen, Thomas 

Arnold, David 

Armstrong, Archibald 

Ailworth, Phillip 

Allen, Isaac 

Atwater, Asaph 

Brannan, Seabury 

Barnard, Samuel 

Belnap, John 

Blodgett, Joseph 

Ballard, Luke 

Blount, Samuel 

Barnes, Asa 

Barker, Simeon 

Brown, Levy 

Badcock, [Babcock,] Jonathan 

Briggs, William 

Bronson, Asiel 

Clary, William 



Cone, Osias 
Cutter, Joseph 
Cook, Samuel 
Cook, Selah 
Cook, Samuel 
Cleveland, Gardner 
Cergil, James 
Collister, James 
Coughlin, John 
Coughlin, John, Jr. 
Crandle, John 
Case, Benjamin 
Dunn, Joseph 
Drury, Josiah 
Davis, Joshua 
Dewey, Elias 
Eno, John 
Fortune, Enoch 
Fisk, Abraham 
Graves, Nathaniel 

Groves, tine [Valentine] 

Graves, Jacob 
Gibbs, Zenas 
Guile, Elijah 

Gridley, eadorus 

Gillett, Timothy 
Hall, Barnabas 
Humphrey, Noah 
Hall, Jonathan 
Hale, Thomas 
Hay den, Jonathan 
Huggins, William 
Higgins, Edward 
Hulvert, Joshua 
Hubbard, Baxter 
Hawkins, Widow 
Hawkins, David 
Harrison, Elisha 
Howard, Stephen 
Hawley, Rice 
Hammond, Benjamin 
House & Pearce (?) 
Ingram, Joseph 
Johnstone, * * * sa 
Keltz, Philip 
Kelsey, Nathan 
King, * * * us 

Meyer, 

Merriman, Christopher 



144 



WHITESBORO S GOLDEN AGE. 



Mills, Kanah 
Mclntire, James 
Morse, Joshua 
Nurse, Jonathan 
Noyes, Amos 
Newell, Elisha 
Peters, Benjamin 
Paine, Joshua 
Putnam, Charles 
Parks, Robert 
Parmalee, Amos 
Perry, George H. 
Potter, Sheldon 
Pryor, Azariah 
Root, Simeon 
Rush, Elijah 
Stanley, John 
Smith, John 
Steel, James 
Shaw, Samuel 
Sails, George 
Sails, Jeremiah 
Scott, Ezekiel 
Sheldon, Stephen 
Smith, James 
Sanford, Jonah 
Smith, James 
Smith, Benjamin 



Smith, David 
Smith, Ebenezer 
Satchell, William 
Shiflerd, Samuel 
Smith, Theodoric 

Shurman, aimer 

Sburman, dediah 

Tillotson, John 
Thompson, Zebulon 
Tryon, Thomas 
Tyler, Ashhel 
Tuller, James 
Thompson, James 
Tuttle, Samuel 
Weston, Jonathan 
Willy, Bezihal 
Wood, Joseph 

Wright, omon[Solomon] 

Webster, Daniel 
Webster, David 
Whipple, Israel 
Whipple, Calvin 
Wood, Tbomas 
Wilson, John, Jr. 
Wilcox, David 
Wright, Gabriel 
Wright, Samuel 



